Lights - sets

Lookie-likie stuff is one of my guilty pleasures, so it should come as little surprise that I got quite excited by the Electron Mili USB Rechargable LED lights set twin pack. However, while a pretty good marriage of form and function, in my opinion their quirky looking Pico cousins make better choices when negotiating unlit roads.

At just under a tenner you'd expect the Lifeline LED safety light to be a cheap blinky for being seen around town. It's much more than that: it's a well built and genuinely capable standalone light for city riding. It's even bright enough - just - to venture beyond the streetlights.

The body of the Lifeline is a two-piece alloy affair with a tight thread and an o-ring seal holding two 2032 button cells, and the LED is housed in a proper reflector behind a good quality lens.

Busch and Muller's Topfire helmet lightsare a really neat way to get yourself a bit of extra visibility on the bike. They're easy to fit, effective and weigh next to nothing.

The kit contains four single red LEDs connected to a battery compartment housing a cheap-to-replace 2032 button cell. The LEDs sit in the rear vents of your lid, held in place by double sided sticky tape, and the battery clips to a strap or, in my case, the centre strut of the rear retention system.

This Cateye light set consists of the Cateye HL-EL010 Uno front light and the Cateye TL-LD630 Rapid 3 rear light. The set is not cheap, but you get a pair of decent lights that will get you seen. Each light runs on a single AA battery, keeping size and weight down while achieving pretty impressive run times and light outputs.

The front light achieves this by using Opticube lens technology to put every lumen available from its single LED to the best possible use. The rear has a high power SMD-LED in the middle, with another LED either side.

Lumicycle's LED3Si is an excellent light that's impressive value for money. It's very similar to Lumicycle's flagship LED4Si road light but with just three emitters instead of four. Entirely unsurprisingly, that makes the claimed output three-quarters that of the 4Si at 850 lumens. Also unsurprising is that the battery lasts longer, with three hours on the highest-power mode.

Waiter, waiter, there's an RSP micro flex light rear in my soup...Keep you voice down sir; they'll all want one. Superb weather seals, shapely, tactile design and impressive power to size ratio, the flex light ranks high in my back up lighting hall of fame and should be of particular interest to winter time trialists or road racers who don't want to find themselves cheated by the sudden onset of darkness.