EXPOSURE FLEX MTB

£320

SPECIFICATION Weight: 100g • Max lumens: 3,200 • Contact: exposurelights.com

Exposure produces two e-bike lights – the Flex and the Fuse. The former is designed for e-mtbs and consists of a machined aluminium lamp unit, tethered remote switch, a bar clamp and a long cable. You will need to buy the specific connector (this consists of a plug and short run of cable) for your bike, which costs an additional £12.50. This add-on means Exposure doesn’t have to produce dedicated lights for each system, but it does require users to attach the cable to the connector. You do this by simply inserting the cables into two gel-filled cable connectors and then crimp them together. The gel provides a waterproof seal.

Once connected, you plug the light into the bike and it automatically detects the amount of voltage in the system and adapts to the available power accordingly. The amount of lumens you get depends on the voltage, so on the Bosch bike we fitted this to that’s around 2,000 lumens.

The Flex comes with a new handlebar clamp that offsets the light in front of the stem, but like the Lupine, it didn’t work with the Race Face stem on our test bike and caught on the fixing bolts. To get round the problem we ran the light off to one side.

We had no issues mounting the remote switch, it attaches via a little rubber band and we mounted it right above the shifter. It’s neat and allows users to access the Exposure OMS mode selector on-the-fly.

There are only two modes built into this light – both use high and low beam, but with or without Reflex. This works exactly the same way as the Toro, boosting output for faster riding and then powering it down when the bike is stationary. You do have to wake up the light once you get going again, and some testers didn’t like that it dims down when you’re stopped, but you can always turn it off. Another tiny criticism is that the bolts on the bar clamp/light are different sizes, which means swapping Allen keys when setting up the angle.

The Flex gets the same high-quality machined construction as all Exposure lights, it’s easy to use and offers some customisation, but the clamp/cable set up is fiddly. It’s also three times the price of the Magicshine, but you don’t get three-times the performance.