Hope Vison 1 LED Front Light

Hope's Vision One is a self-contained wire-free light with a claimed output of 240 lumens from a single, large LED emitter. Hope's reputation is built on CNC machining things out of lumps of aluminium, so it's no surprise that that's exactly how the Vision One is made. It's rather nicely done, too, with a ridged outer surface, laser-etched logos and a choice of colours. It's quite large but not all that heavy, with a claimed weight of 110g (not including batteries).

The light is bolted to the bar clamp, so removing it means taking the whole lot off the bars. That's no great hardship as the clamp is a tool-free hinged design, but does mean you have to get the angle just right each time you refit it. If you're taking the Vision One on and off your bike a lot, a bit of tape on the bars to give a datum for the angle would save a bit of faffing. The nylon clamp isn't quite as well finished as the light unit itself but it does the job. Different sized bars are accommodated by interchangeable rubber bungs inside the clamp. Again, these do the job although one of them disappeared somewhere. Handily, the mount affords a few degrees of sideways adjustability so you can compensate for having the light mounted off-centre.

Inside the Vision One's body, accessed via a screw-off cap with a healthy O-ring seal, is the battery compartment. Rather than a rechargeable battery pack, Hope's light uses four good old AAs that sit in a removable holder, leaving the choice of actual batteries up to you. This approach has benefits and drawbacks. On the upside, high-capacity rechargeable AA batteries are easy to come by and inexpensive. Using a readily-available battery size means that carrying spares is more plausible and any garage or corner shop will get you lit up again. The battery holder itself is a generic item so you could even get a second one and preload it with spare batteries. In theory it should make the light cheaper too, but you don't have to look far to find lights at around the Hope's price and output that include battery and charger too.

The downside of using AAs is that the light has no way of knowing exactly what you're using, what capacity they are and what the discharge curve looks like. As a result, there's no way to design any sort of meaningful battery state indicator or low battery warning, let alone the kind of smart depowering tricks that some posh lights do. If this were an old-style halogen light then you'd get some idea of battery state by the bulb starting to go dim, but LEDs driven by voltage regulators are another story - they'll stay at a constant brightness until the battery can't deliver sufficient voltage and then go out. So the first clue you get that the Vision One is running low on power is when you're plunged into darkness.

This means that you need to pay attention to how much you've used the light since the batteries were fresh. Hope claims 2.75 hours of use on full power from 2700mAh NiMH rechargeables - I stuck some weedy 1300mAh ones in because they were handy and got over an hour out of them, so Hope's claimed run time sounds eminently plausible.

As for power, there's adequate amounts of that. 240 lumens isn't a massive output compared to some lights, but the Vision One puts out quite a tightly-focussed beam which carries a fair way. I was happy up to 20mph or so with it on full power on properly dark (no streetlights, no moon, no stars, tree cover) roads with the light positioned with no risk of dazzling oncoming drivers. Depending on circumstances you might be able to eke out a little more reach by angling it up a bit. Commuters should note that there's pretty much no side visibility.

Cycling between the settings is achieved with the usual single button push. The button itself isn't illuminated and can be tricky to find, although the ridges and bumps machined into the light's body help somewhat. I'd rather have the flashing mode outside the standard button-push cycle - as it is you get flashing between low and high which is rather distracting unless you know where you are and can pull off a quick double-push.

Verdict

The Hope Vision One is well made and offers decent, usable output and good runtimes (assuming sensible battery choice). The self-contained design is convenient, but the lack of a low battery warning is something of a drawback. Freedom of battery choice goes a long way to balancing that. Commuters may want something that's more visible from the side.