Seen in the Dark: The Cateye HL Headlight
A powerful headlight is not just about seeing at night, but about making yourself conspicuous to drivers at times when you tend to blur into the background grey – at dusk or dawn, on rainy or overcast days, in the wafting fog…. Seeing and being seen is the minimum for safety when you’re on a bike.
The Cateye HL is one of the most powerful 1 watt LED lights out there. With a Power Opticube lens, it’s got extremely high quality optics with both high and low beams. On 4 AA batteries, it will give you 60 hours runtime.
For an LED, this light is super bright. It gives off 800 candlepower. Perfect for lighting the road ahead or making yourself known to traffic. But not enough for you to ride down a dark road at night. You’ll need a candlepower around 3,000 to see really well at night. Halogen or xenon lights can do that easily, with 6,000 candlepower, but they run for less than 6 hours and may not give you the kind of glow you want. So you’ll have to match the light to your needs.
When you’re making your decision, check out How Bright is that Light? the cool light test run by Eddy’s Bike Shop in Ohio. Eddy’s aimed 16 bike lights at a wall to find out for sure which one was brightest. The photo results are on the site. The Cateye HL was one of the brightest LED lights they tested.