Light and Motion Vega
The Light and Motion Vega is a 4W LED/85 Lumen lightweight headlight. It is very bright for its size, very well built and great for commuting.
The mount gets it up above any cables on your bars, and takes up very little handlebar real estate.
It uses a standard thumbscrew style mount. here you can see it compared to the Shimano Nexus generator light, quite a bit brighter.
Here you can see the mount with no light on it.
And it attaches with this swivel, I had to crank down on that Phillips head to keep the light from swivelling on its own. The light did include a couple of breakaway discs that are supposed to keep the light from breaking in a crash, thats cool.
This is the on off button, easy to use with winter gloves. The light turns on if you tap the button twice, has 3 brightness levels and a blinking mode. The bright mode is good enough for slower night mountain biking and fantastic for commuting on dark roads. I think this light paired with a headlamp is a great combo for mountain biking.
Just a view of the front of the light.
The light charges from the little cover on the bottom there, it charges quickly with the supplied wall wart style charger, last 2 hours on full output or 20 hours on blink mode. I have been using it for blinking mode to commute and I never worry about charging it. Its a great light for commuting.
The nice thing about this is how bright it is compared to how small, it is a self contained package so its easy to take off when you have to lock your bike up outside. The light is also versatile so you could use it for mtn biking in a pinch or as a supplement to your mountain bike light you already use.
My only complaint is how hard it is to get off of the mount when I get in to work, it moves the handlebar mount all around and I always think I am going to break the thing with the force I have to use to get it off of the mount!
I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a really light commuting light. Prior to using this I was using my Niterider Evolution Smart on blinking mode, but taking off the light, and the battery pack every day was getting old, not to mention the weight and that the burn time on the niterider had gone to crap. I purchased this from Performance on sale for $115.