SP All-Round LED Safety Light

If you buy it with SP's Connect Saddle Case, then the SP All-Round Safety Light is a logical and useful addition to your bike, whatever the time of year. If it came with a bracket for your seatpost, it'd be a no-brainer.

• Pros: A neat add-on to SP's Connect saddlebag, bright enough, disruptive modes
• Cons: No seatpost bracket included, total cost

First things first, in case it wasn't obvious already, this light was tested attached to SP's Connect Saddle Case. Why? Well, because it's designed to fit to it with an integrated bracket, and also because SP doesn't supply a seatpost bracket with the light.

Surely, even if the light is designed to work in tandem with the brand's own saddlebags, a clamp of some sort – even a cheap one – wouldn't go amiss? Not everyone is going to want an SP case to attach it to. Yes, you do get two adaptors for a mount, but you don't get the mount itself.

SP does sell various clamps at an additional cost of £20-£25 depending on the version you opt for. Add that to the £35 cost of the light unit itself, and suddenly you might be thinking twice. You can get small 'look-at-me' units for less, like Lezyne's max-250-lumen Zecto Drive Max for £48 and its Strip Drive Pro 300 for £49.99, both including brackets, or less-bright options for a lot less: Oxford's 15-lumen Ultratorch Mini+ is just £9.99 including bracket.

Anyway, with that complaint out of the way, the light unit itself is actually a nice little performer. You get up to 100 lumens of power from two LEDs, which can operate in three modes (not two, as SP's website seems to state).

You get a static 20-lumen option, and two disruptive flash modes, one of which flashes up to 100 lumens in a pulse-and-strobe pattern over an always-on static mode, putting out around 10 lumens in the background.

All are useful and tick the visibility box, while battery life is acceptable. From full to completely discharged used on the static option – used in several stints – you get around 6:30hrs of life with the final hour 'reducing' to the combo mode, while the simpler of the two flash modes yields a claimed 16 hours.

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I like to use flashing modes because they tend to draw more attention in a queue of static brake lights and the like, but also to save battery life and reduce the amount of times I need to charge it. I got a full working week out of the unit in this mode, which included many commutes and cross-Bath spins, plus a medium-length winter ride – not bad at all.

It's versatile too, in case you're a multi-sport person. The patented clip-and-twist fitting system is solid and secure, and deceptively simple to use, and can fit to your arm if you buy the running band accessory.

Build quality is excellent – it's definitely 'weatherproof' – while the simple plastic and rubber external construction proved sturdy when I spilled it out of my hands. It only weighs 41g, so it's actually quite easy to drop if you're careless. That light weight also means it doesn't add much if any pendulum effect to the Connect Saddle Case it was tested with, so that's also a positive.

The All-Round Safety Light has me in two minds, though. On the one hand, it's a great little lightweight unit that adds vital visibility to you and your bike... but on the other, you need to buy an additional £20-£25 bracket or £35 saddle bag to go with the £35 cost of the unit itself. Although I like it as a product, there are others around that can out-power and out-price it.

Verdict

A tidy little unit, but there are question marks over its ultimate value once you factor in buying a mount