Lights

Exposure Flare rear light – review

Exposure Flare LED rear light – £40

Unless you never ride on the road, you’re going to need a rear light. Whether it’s for commuting to the office or just for getting you out of town to your nearest trails for the weekly night ride, it pays to have a bright rear light to stop motorists running into you.

Exposure Lights expanded their range of lights a couple of years ago with the obvious gap filler of a rear light. The Flare was born. It follows the principles set up by the company’s existing lights, of simplicity and clean design.

As lights go, it’s impossibly bright: 110 Lumens is insane for a rear light. That means you’ll be the brightest thing on the road, so other road users will easily spot you amongst all the other traffic. The single Seoul P4 LED is powered by a rechargeable Li-Ion battery. Use with a non-rechargable battery (the type that powers most SLR cameras) and the output drops to 70, which is still pretty damn bright.

The Flare light is about as simple as a rear light can be. Switching the light on is simply a case of screwing the reflector close on the unit, an action which closes the electrical circuit. To turn the light off is a matter of breaking that circuit by unscrewing the reflector a small degree. Attachment to the bike couldn’t be any easier.

The cable free ethos that is deployed so well on the company’s front lights is used on the Flare. The light sits in a ‘carrier’ which is strapped to the seatpost using a supplied thick rubber band, stretchy enough to fit around a variety of seat post diameters. There’s even a mount now that fixes to the saddle rails if you prefer.

Battery life is impressive, with 22-hours in flash mode and 9-hours in continuous (with a rechargeable battery) and we got fairly close in our tests.