Bright front bike light for less than £3? Delighted!

Written Sep 5, 2014, tagged under post,Amazon,cheap,cycling,lights,safety

I love a good torch! Always have, and probably always will. So when I first came across a particular type of small, bright, zoomable and extremely cheap LED torch on Amazon, I was very interested. They use a particular LED called a Cree Q5, which appears to be widely known, and are available from a number of different vendors, the cheapest of which ship the item directly from China.

I bought mine on this page on Amazon (the vendor was "AutoWQ"), and paid the miniscule sum of £1.93 including shipping. Then the interesting part happened! Amazon's "people who bought this also bought..." section pointed me towards a bike mounting clip for the torch. After a quick scan of the reviews, I bought mine on this link (from the vendor "Mestall (Ship from HongKong)") for £0.96 including shipping. At £2.89 in total, and already knowing the torches are good, I didn't think I had a lot to lose - and still don't!

Now we move forward a couple of weeks, and two small parcels land on our doormat. There, wrapped in bubble wrap with Chinese customs stickers attached, are my items: everything works exactly as expected, so add one AA battery and I now have the cheapest and brightest front light I think I have ever owned! Once I've had a bit more time actually using this light, I will try to report back on how it works on the bike.

A bit more on the torch. The end slides in and out, allowing the beam to focus from a very small square that works at a great distance, through to a much more diffuse beam with better coverage but obviously not as bright. The switch allows the light itself to operate in bright/dim and steady/flashing modes, useful on a bike. It runs on normal AA batteries, as I mentioned earlier, but I understand that you can also use a special rechargeable battery (apparently called a "14500") that runs at a higher voltage and so puts out more light. I can't comment on this, though, as I haven't tried it. There are also other similar cheap, bright torches out there that may well be just as good or even better, however this one has two main benefits in my mind: I own it; and it was absolutely dirt cheap!

We now own 6 or more of these torches as they are very handy: the kids use them for guide and scout camps, for instance, and we probably ought to leave one in the car too. I can see us buying more of the bike clips too, as they also look to be great value. Now just to figure out a simple way to attach a red filter to allow another on the back somehow...

Incidentally, make sure you don't get ripped off buying the same torch for very much more: I've seen an identical torch, albeit boxed up nicely, selling for more like £30 somewhere online.