Smart Lunar 25 front and rear light set

If you're looking for a bright, well made and, erm, white light set then look no further: the Lunar 25 is about as good a commuting set as you're likely to find. The bright and well focused front beam is plenty to see by at night, and the 0.5 Watt rear flasher will render you visible at night from literally miles away. And both will light you up from the sides too, important for safety in town. You get batteries and good mounts for your money as well.

When I first picked up this set I was expecting to be a bit disappointed: £55 seemed a lot to pay for a commuter set and the lights both look similar (except in colour) to other Smart units that I've tried before, fine lights but not at that price. How wrong I was though: Smart have crammed a 25 lux high emitter LED in the front lamp and a 0.5 Watt blinker in the back, along with two other LEDs for good measure. I was unlucky enough to be looking at the rear light when I first turned it on. It's blindingly bright: Smart claim you can see it from a mile away and I've no reason to doubt that's true. It's certainly fantastic around town either in blinking or steady mode. The mount is a simple screw-tightened band which comes with shims for different 'posts, and there's a seatstay mount too. However, the seatpost band was too small for the Dahon folder we fitted it to. In the end we drilled a hole in the rear clip of the light and bolted it to the rack, which worked fine.

The front light has two power settings (bright and very bright) and a flashing mode. It's comparable in brightness to high power torches like the Ultrafire units you can buy online: it's plenty to be seen, and certainly enough to ride on road at night. If you were careful it'd even get you round a bit of singletrack. The beam is well focused without being too narrow, and you can ride at a fair lick on unlit roads by the light it gives out. The mount is nicely constructed with an adjustable band which does away with the need for shims, and the light slides in with a positive click.

Burn times are good for such bright lights. On high power Smart claim that you can get 7 hours from the front torch, and the low setting doubles the run time; we left it on low overnight and it was still running, albeit a bit more dimly, suggesting the run times aren't too fanciful. The rear has a claimed flashing run time of 100 hours and even if it turned out to only half that in reality I'd be happy to change the batteries every few weeks for the amount of light it puts out.

Both lights have good side visibility: rear simply by dint of its being so bright, and the front from the use of cut out sections on either side of the front lens. Construction quality is good too. Both lights are predomniantly plastic but everything fits together snugly and the weather sealing is good; both lights were happy to be completely submerged for an hour or so without any issues (I added a bit of silicone grease to the seals when fitting the batteries), so the odd commuting downpour shouldn't worry them unduly.

Verdict

All in all this is a fairly pricy commuting light set but it justifies its price with excellent performance and solid build quality. If your commute takes you out into the lanes or you just fancy a bit of night riding on top of the schlep to work, then the Lunar 25s are a viable alternative to a more expensive rechargeable light for less extreme riding after dark.