Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

review

Smart Lunar 25 front and rear light set

8
£54.99

VERDICT:

8
10
Good quality, bright set of lights for commuting and beyond
Weight: 
0g
Contact: 
www.fisheroutdoor.co.uk

At road.cc every product is thoroughly tested for as long as it takes to get a proper insight into how well it works. Our reviewers are experienced cyclists that we trust to be objective. While we strive to ensure that opinions expressed are backed up by facts, reviews are by their nature an informed opinion, not a definitive verdict. We don't intentionally try to break anything (except locks) but we do try to look for weak points in any design. The overall score is not just an average of the other scores: it reflects both a product's function and value – with value determined by how a product compares with items of similar spec, quality, and price.

What the road.cc scores mean

Good scores are more common than bad, because fortunately good products are more common than bad.

  • Exceptional
  • Excellent
  • Very Good
  • Good
  • Quite good
  • Average
  • Not so good
  • Poor
  • Bad
  • Appalling

If you're looking for a bright, well made and, erm, white light set then look no further: the Lunar 25 is about as good a commuting set as you're likely to find. The bright and well focused front beam is plenty to see by at night, and the 0.5 Watt rear flasher will render you visible at night from literally miles away. And both will light you up from the sides too, important for safety in town. You get batteries and good mounts for your money as well.

When I first picked up this set I was expecting to be a bit disappointed: £55 seemed a lot to pay for a commuter set and the lights both look similar (except in colour) to other Smart units that I've tried before, fine lights but not at that price. How wrong I was though: Smart have crammed a 25 lux high emitter LED in the front lamp and a 0.5 Watt blinker in the back, along with two other LEDs for good measure. I was unlucky enough to be looking at the rear light when I first turned it on. It's blindingly bright: Smart claim you can see it from a mile away and I've no reason to doubt that's true. It's certainly fantastic around town either in blinking or steady mode. The mount is a simple screw-tightened band which comes with shims for different 'posts, and there's a seatstay mount too. However, the seatpost band was too small for the Dahon folder we fitted it to. In the end we drilled a hole in the rear clip of the light and bolted it to the rack, which worked fine.

The front light has two power settings (bright and very bright) and a flashing mode. It's comparable in brightness to high power torches like the Ultrafire units you can buy online: it's plenty to be seen, and certainly enough to ride on road at night. If you were careful it'd even get you round a bit of singletrack. The beam is well focused without being too narrow, and you can ride at a fair lick on unlit roads by the light it gives out. The mount is nicely constructed with an adjustable band which does away with the need for shims, and the light slides in with a positive click.

Burn times are good for such bright lights. On high power Smart claim that you can get 7 hours from the front torch, and the low setting doubles the run time; we left it on low overnight and it was still running, albeit a bit more dimly, suggesting the run times aren't too fanciful. The rear has a claimed flashing run time of 100 hours and even if it turned out to only half that in reality I'd be happy to change the batteries every few weeks for the amount of light it puts out.

Both lights have good side visibility: rear simply by dint of its being so bright, and the front from the use of cut out sections on either side of the front lens. Construction quality is good too. Both lights are predomniantly plastic but everything fits together snugly and the weather sealing is good; both lights were happy to be completely submerged for an hour or so without any issues (I added a bit of silicone grease to the seals when fitting the batteries), so the odd commuting downpour shouldn't worry them unduly.

Verdict

 

All in all this is a fairly pricy commuting light set but it justifies its price with excellent performance and solid build quality. If your commute takes you out into the lanes or you just fancy a bit of night riding on top of the schlep to work, then the Lunar 25s are a viable alternative to a more expensive rechargeable light for less extreme riding after dark.

If you're thinking of buying this product using a cashback deal why not use the road.cc Top Cashback page and get some top cashback while helping to support your favourite independent cycling website

road.cc test report

Make and model: Smart Lunar 25 front and rear light set

Size tested: n/a

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
9/10
Rate the product for performance:
 
9/10
Rate the product for durability:
 
8/10
Rate the product for weight, if applicable:
 
8/10
Rate the product for value:
 
8/10

Did you enjoy using the product? Yes

Would you consider buying the product? Yes

Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes

Overall rating: 8/10

About the tester

Age: 36  Height: 190cm  Weight: 98kg

I usually ride: Schwinn Moab, urbanised with 700cs  My best bike is: Trek 1.5 with upgrades

I've been riding for: 10-20 years  I ride: Every day  I would class myself as: Experienced

I regularly do the following types of riding: time trialling, commuting, sportives, general fitness riding, fixed/singlespeed, mtb, Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling, track

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

Add new comment

10 comments

Avatar
Recumbenteer | 13 years ago
0 likes

The Smart Lunar rear is almost identical [the switch has changed and the lens is modified for enhanced side visibility] to the Smart Superflash, they're both excellent. I suspect the Lunar rear has better side visibility, because the lens on either side of the main LED is slightly different from the Superflash. They look bright enough for a rear flasher in daytime, except perhaps on a sunny day.
And the rackmount is excellent.

The packaging for the Lunar Rear says:

Conforms to the road vehicle lighting regulations in flashing mode.

I bought the Lunar Rear this month for £10.97 from DotBike.

Avatar
dave atkinson | 14 years ago
0 likes

haven't had any problems with the drop resilience of the front light. I haven't actually tested for that but i've dropped it plenty. £54.99 is the RRP, you can get it online for £35 even though it's quite new, I'd expect to see it come down even from there. so not bad value. For comparison the RRP of the superflash – which you can have for £9 if you shop around – is (I think) £16.99

you're right about the various brightness measurements. Lumens is probably the most useful for comparison although even then there's issues with the nature of the beam.

Avatar
amazon22 | 14 years ago
0 likes

I wish we could get some meaningful standardisation on light output - manufacturers variously quote lux, candlepower, watts and all manner of marketspeak in no doubt a deliberate attempt to avoid like for like comparisons. Given that you can pick up the rear light for about £11, this seems ludicrously overpriced. The front light looks as though it uses the same body as the Smart BeSpoke - I dropped mine new out of the box and all 3 lugs holding the front part snapped off, (they were minuscule) rendering it useless.

Avatar
dave atkinson | 14 years ago
0 likes

The rear one is the superflash but i think the front is a slightly redesigned unit to that one, with a different LED. i'd have to check though  39

Avatar
ctznsmith | 14 years ago
0 likes

Can you buy both these seperately? I think I have the rear as the 'Superflash'.

Would the front in the set be the same as this one?

Avatar
Skardy | 14 years ago
0 likes

Dave - Do you reckon the front light would do the job for my commute home from Bristol to Bath along A4 and then up the poorly lit approach past the Globe to Pennyquick?

Skardy

Avatar
dave atkinson replied to Skardy | 14 years ago
0 likes
Skardy wrote:

Dave - Do you reckon the front light would do the job for my commute home from Bristol to Bath along A4 and then up the poorly lit approach past the Globe to Pennyquick?

Yeah, just about. don't try and hit 50 on the 1 in 6 though  19  19

Avatar
Skardy replied to dave atkinson | 14 years ago
0 likes

Shouldn't be a problem as I can't get above 49.6!!!  20 I might put some rocks in my back pack to nudge me over the 50 mark. Obviously without the lights.  3

Avatar
dave atkinson | 14 years ago
0 likes

cheers JTM. probably more effective than the Heath-Robinson approach I took  1

Avatar
John_the_Monkey | 14 years ago
0 likes

SMART do sell a rack mount for the rear flasher too - I know Dotbike sell them for not much money. (£2 or thereabouts).

Latest Comments