Moon Aerolite COB Light

The Moon Aerolite COB is a good backup or emergency light, with a long run-time and decent visibility. The mounting options mean it's not really legal on its own but it'll help to get you seen, and the mounting positions make you appear bigger on the road, so that's good too.

In essence, the Aerolite is a barrel with a 60-lumen front light (a single CREE LED), and a 10-lumen 7-chip COB (Chip on Board) rear light. Pressing the single button turns them on or off.

You can have the front light on its own in 60-lumen, 30-lumen or flashing modes, and both together in three further modes: both steady, front steady and rear flashing, and both flashing. It's not hard to get from one to the other, but the light doesn't remember what setting you had it on last, which is a pity.

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Run-times are stated from 2hr 40mins from both lights on full to 38 hours for just the front on flashing. I got 2hr 15mins out of mine on full, which, considering its size, isn't at all bad. Charging it up takes a couple of hours from the computer's USB socket.

It's really designed to sit on your helmet, or hang under the end of your drop bars, and there's a bracket included for both use cases. The helmet one has Velcro straps and the bar drop one O-rings, and both have articulated wings to cope with a wider range of helmet or bar shapes. That works pretty well, although it does make the light a bit susceptible to getting knocked off whack. Moon claims you can fit it to flat bars or stays too, but I'm not really sure why you would.

If it's on your head then the light is nice and high and easily visible, and you can point it at signs and potholes. It's not super-bright but the focused beam is still useful.

On the drops it has the benefit of making your bike look wider; the downside is that your hand space on the drops is reduced.

The bracket allows you to angle the light to light your way. Mostly I ran it on my helmet as a supplementary light and it was useful both as an extra light source for reading road signs or fiddling with the bike in the dark, and also as another thing to be seen by – as I said, nice and high and visible. At 60g it's barely noticeable.

> Check out our guide to the best front lights here 

> Check out our guide to the best rear lights here

The Aerolite is rated IPX4 for waterproofing; that means you can splash water at it but it's not submersible. It's a shame it wasn't sealed (or tested) to a higher level but I didn't have any water get in during testing and it was out in some pretty heavy rain.

Overall, the Aerolite is a good extra bit of visibility and enough of a front light to be useful after dark. Because of the nature of the light and the places that you'd fit it you won't be legal if you run it on its own, although you'll probably be just as visible with this on your head as you would be with a blinky on the bar and the seatpost. It's much easier to recommend as a secondary light.

Verdict

Good secondary all-in-one front and rear light with a decent beam and long run-times for its size