SpiderFire LED

With another winters commute approaching I decided that I'd like to open up my route options which would mean that my pathetic LED front light would be useless. You know the sort, ye'olde LED flashers that are more "be seen" than "see by".

So I trawled the tinterweb and found Tactical4U offered a compact bar mounted LED system that ran off x3 AA's and pumped out 200 lumen's. Best of all the price was a smidgen over £20 - which surely made it worth a punt. Uphilla confirmed that he ordered something similar a while back and said it'd probably be okay for commuting. Sorted.

The Hong Kong shipment arrived less than a week later (£10 p&p) and was quickly filled with spankin' new NiMh's. Initially I was a little disappointed with the output but then found that the beam can be adjusted from a teeny spot (the shape of the LED emittor) out to a wide flood.

The lamp bracket is rubberized and fits well on the bars but only offers up/down alignment. A large recessed rear mounted switch controls the light through low, off, high, off and flashing. The battery uses an elasticated strap which fits easily underneath my 100mm stem.

In use the lamp is small and unobtrusive and the clunky button works well even with gloves pinkies. When the street lamps disappear I find that the flood setting (even on high) doesn't offer sufficient penetration but a couple twists tightens the beam to a more useful spot/flood combo. It works a treat on the roads though and cars/buses no longer cut across my path.

I've no specific details on actual runtimes yet but the spec's suggest 6hrs.

For less than thirty notes this is a marvelous offering and proves that robust, bright and long running LED's are defo the way to go :thumbu

Uphilla has fondled the the unit, played with the three light settings and mentioned that they'd since improved the battery casing and shrunk the lamp.

* "info" pic's listed on behalf of Tactical4U (to save bandwidth).