So far, this has been a great light, its mid brightness is more then adequate to navigate paths at full speed in the middle of the night with no other light sources (street, house, etc.), its top brightness is almost too bright, and luckily the steadypulse is mid bright lasting for 3hrs and plenty of time for a 40mile night ride. I wish there were more steadypulse settings then just the one, and some of the others are kind of cumbersome when you are only trying to switch from steadypulse to a lower steady. One of the things I noticed is that its mid bright steadypulse was too bright for other oncoming riders kind of blinding them, just like a car on a unlit road with your brights, but for me to switch to a lower brightness was nearly impossible to cycle through all the modes in time before they passed you before you now needed it back up bright to medium to see adequately again yourself. After a few times of playing that game I finally ended up slapping my light to shine on the right of the path until I passed them and realigned it when they were by me. Probably not the ideal situation as I am sure it will wear out the mount pivot and start flopping around wherever it wants eventually. It needs a momentary switch (preferably external thumb toggle) I can hit to dim it until I hit the switch again to bring it back up to mid brightness just like a car. It could use a rainproof bottle battery connection for rides that are going to last more then the 3hrs it says the mid level has, although I haven't had it run out of juice on me yet. I have noticed that, while charging, the light will allow you to turn it on which is great as a lot of other lights won't allow use while charging...I think I can rig an external bottle battery pack and silicon seal a pigtail into the charging port to lead to a self made rainproof connection if I find myself needing that much juice. Or...just buy a second one of these lights and switch them out when one dies. Something I don't know and need to test is whether the light, when it is charging, and the light on, if there is an internal isolation that only allows an -on state- or -charging state- vs a simultaneous -on- and -charging- state because that would matter a whole lot and make the point of the bottle battery moot if it was the former. I am contemplating making an external thumb switch and soldering it parallel into the lights existing switch as the switch is resistant to accidental bump while in your bag or whatnot which is great, but when mounted on your handlebars the switch is a little bit forward of the mounts apex so that when you are finger fumbling the switch while riding and pressing, it tends to push the light downward eventually that might have been avoided if the switched had been placed a little further back either on or behind the apex. All things considered, this is so far for me (4mo) and by other reviews a great light for only $40 and its shortcomings are potentially very easily overcome as described above, in fact, thats kind of key with this light, that it is constructed in a way that you can take it apart and modify it easily vs other lights that are one and done factory glue sealed, and again, that charging while in use (if it works like I think) is a biggie that many other lights don't have. When I saw its cousin the cygolite dart 210 at REI, the staff who are a bunch of outdoor bike nuts typical of the Portland area couldn't stop talking about how great it was, and they are pretty honest folks, the only problem is that at the time they wanted some $38 or so for 210 lumens when amazon offered the metro 700 lumens for about the same price kind of a no brainer.
