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I need a powerful front light for cycling on roads in the sticks at night.
I've heard lots of positive things about these cheap Cree lights on Ebay & Amazon. Trouble is, when you look there are loads of them!
Can anyone recommend a particular light and seller to buy from?
Cheers!
What budget is cheap?
Paid around 30 for mine off eBay over a year ago that was with a rear light and a few accesories. I use it for road and Mtb had no problems with it at all and get around 4 hours out of a battery if that helps
are these 1000+ lumen cree type lights really suitable for the road? they are bloody blinding to on coming traffic.
Yeah around the £30 mark
An [url= http://www.lightmalls.com/ultrafire-wf-501b-cree-xm-l2-5-modes-led-flashlight-torch-1-18650 ]XM-L2 in a 501b[/url] body is about £8 from Lightmalls... you will need a cell or cells (I use reclaimed laptop cells, otherwise try [url= http://www.torchythebatteryboy.com/ ]Torchy[/url] on [url= http://dsa.ebay.co.uk/sch/big_f_d_d/m.html ]eBay[/url]), a charger (£5) and a mount (£2). I also have my charger on a timer just to be on the safe side.
On medium power this sort of light is plenty bright enough on the road and would need to be dipped (if you have the right mount you can just tip them) or switched to low power for oncoming traffic.
Personally I would always have 2 lights for 'redundancy' - and at £8 they are pretty cheap. I have one of these as my new lid light for MTB... though the XML-T6 501bs I have are still great lights.
I've got one of these [url= http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-SecurityIng-1200Lm-CREE-U2-LED-Cycling-Bike-Light-Torch-Battery-Pack-/151066493958?pt=UK_SportGoods_CyclAcces_RL&hash=item232c43c406&safe=on ]mini Cree lights with shield that may go some way to avoiding oncoming driver retina dazzling[/url] I've not really used it for any significant amout of time so I'll take it as a back up light on this evening's night ride and test it on the on road sections and maybe report back.
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Otherwise a zoomable Cree flashlight mounted on the helmet suits me for riding the quieter roads as you can dip your head when there's any oncoming traffic and you can adjust the beam with the zoom to suit the road/lanes.