Lezyne Super Drive 1250 XXL
£104.99 › Big power for night riding
IT’S ONLY A few short years since lights putting out as much as 1250 lumens would have meant a head-unit and separate battery, so it’s impressive how quickly both battery and LED light technology have moved on. Lezyne is one of the pioneers of LED technology and the Super Drive is one of its latest to exploit this white light to the full.
The XXL controls its output cleverly so you can optimise between lengthy run time and maximum brightness when needed. With six modes, and an Overdrive setting, you can run the XXL in 150lumen flash or pulse mode, which appears like a slow flash, when in town or well-lit areas. In these modes we got more than 24 hours run time. Lezyne claims 25 hours for flash and 35 for pulse.
When your route starts to darken step up through Eco (250 lumens, nine hours, 15 minutes), Enduro (625 lumens, three hours, 45 minutes), Blast (950 lumens, two hours, 40 minutes) or the intensely-bright Overdrive mode, providing enough detail to ride in the dark through wooded singletrack. Note that will reduce run time to one hour, 50 minutes for the full 1250 lumens.
The single button features a colour change LED, green for 100 per cent, yellow for 50, red for 10, and flashing red to indicate five per cent battery life. This is good, but doesn’t fully tell you how long you’ve got left. We just took it as when it goes yellow turn the light down, red turn it down further, and if it flashes switch to a flash mode. Charging takes a lengthy eight hours if you’re using a USB port, but if you switch to a wall adaptor (phone charger) it just about halves charge time.
Quite often lights can be big on power, but don’t use it well. Thankfully the lens on the XXL is cleverly shaped. The flat base and curved top projects a solid centre with plenty of spill to highlight the peripheral vision spots and the solid top lip ensures you don’t blind oncoming traffic. Side cutouts on the body offer some side-on visibility too.
At 268g, including the quick-fix rubber mount, and 110x45x30mm, the XXL is big, but slim enough so that it doesn’t take up too much real estate on your handlebar. You can rotate the bracket, and the jaws of the mount are soft enough to stretch around slimmer aluminium stems. If you can live with the bigger size then the XXL just might be all the front light you’ll ever need.