dreadnought

I've been using the rear lights from Portland Design Works since they came out 3 years ago or so.  Past employees of Planet Bikes, they know how to make great product that last and work really well.  A few weeks ago, I received their premier front light - the Cosmic Dreadnought 110.

Here it is on the front of the cruiser, sets up nice with different thickness of handlebars.  All you have to do is:

Here is the bracket, it has a thumbscrew to fine tune the snugness on the bar, to change the mount to one of three diameters of the bars you:

Find the screw on the top of the mount, and unscrew it all the way out,

remove the top plate of the mount,

and choose what notch the bottom section (the part with the thumbscrew) of the mount goes into.  The one in the front (to the left in the picture) of the mount is for 22.2mm, the middle for 26.0mm and the farthest one (to the right) back is for 31.8mm.   Then reverse the steps until it is all back together.  Simple.

Now for brightness.  I have a commute that is pretty mellow.  From work, I start off on a busy street, dive into a little development, back onto a busy street, and then into the Metropark System, out of the park onto a busy street and finish on some little neighborhood streets.  Ambient lighting goes from tons of light, to none, back to streetlights.  On the busy streets, I use the strobe feature, so the damn cars are more likely to see me.  On high, the light looks like this on the back of a white door. 

In real life,I set my light so that the brightest ball hits about 15 feet or so in front of me.  This gives me a sheath of brightness that I don't "outrun" on the path.  With the light on "High", the light also allows me to see the distance all the way back to my front tire.  Light really bright in the middle of the beam.

On low beam:

The light isn't as intense, but for riding on side streets, or on a bike path that doesn't need a super intense beam, it works perfectly.  The light isn't as bright as it was on "High" in the middle, but more diffused throughout the ball of brightness.  I use this light for the majority of my commute, but I also don't like a super bright light while riding in the park or on streets.  I find that it works the best for me.

Burn times are pretty close to what is listed on Portland Design's website, I've had to change out my batteries once (getting close to the second time), and I switch up between the modes pretty often.  I guess that I got about 20 hours or so during multi-modes.  Next is to try rechargeable batteries to see how well the brightness and burn times shell out.

So, in a nutshell, this light is really nice, and I've been really happy with it.  Short of a rechargeable system or a dynamo hub, this light is the nicest I have used.