Moon Meteor-X Auto

The Moon Meteor-X Auto is an innovative light that brings together strong battery life and a powerful beam at a very reasonable price, but it's not the simplest to operate.

• Pros: Bright, auto function, price
• Cons: Over-complicated sequencing of modes

Moon has been making a name for itself for a number of years, and the Meteor-X Auto is one of its most exciting. Rather than simply being a regular light that turns off and on, it has an automatic mode based on light sensitivity.

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The first thing to look at in any light, regardless of fancy automation, is the light it produces. Although the Meteor-X Auto doesn't pump out a huge amount of light, its 320-lumen setting is certainly enough for all but the most pitch-black environments. As you can see from the beam comparison engine above, the beam itself is fairly condensed, which means you can't necessarily see around you, but you can see pretty well what's in front.

I used it mainly on fairly well-lit London roads, but also took it out to very unlit Kent lanes at dusk and it was adept in both, although I wouldn't take it as my sole light in unlit environments.

There are seven different settings, in manual or auto mode: three solid beams with different brightnesses, three different flashes and an SOS sequence. This gives a lot of variety, even if you may struggle to find the one you want. Although it's great to have a choice of settings, here the number of different button presses to operate them is a little frustrating. For instance, holding it down for three seconds turns it from auto to manual (or vice versa); you then have the option of flashing or solid modes, which you choose by giving the button two presses, and you then cycle through the various brightness or flash settings.

Thankfully, once I'd found the right mode, the light has a memory feature so it turns on in the last one I was using.

The most interesting element of the light is the auto mode. The light can detect the lighting conditions and either turn on or off. I found the light would generally turn on straight away when it detected the dark, and took around 30 seconds to turn itself off. It generally worked well, though I would have liked it to come on sooner, especially during dark mornings.

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Battery life is good, ranging from a claimed 2 hours on the solid beam of 320 lumens through to 57 hours on daytime flash. There were so many variations that trying to work out if each was accurate was nigh-on impossible, but I tested the full 320 lumen mode and it lasted around 2 hours 15 minutes before it died, which is pretty good.

The battery level can be seen by the LEDs that shine through the button, which also showed whether the light was in automatic mode (green), manual (blue), or running low on power (red).

Charging is through a micro USB and takes around 2-3 hours, depending on whether you're charging from a wall socket or computer USB port.

Unusally, the mount is separate from the light, something that isn't too common in today's market. The mount itself has a thick laddered rubber strap and an adjustable hook on the other side, which means it can fit around different sized and shaped bars – it fitted well round a set of aero bars, for instance. The light itself attaches through simply sliding on and clicking in. To undo it, you just press a button on the side and slide it back out.

The RRP of £32.99 is pretty good for something with this many sequences and the automatic feature. When you look at others with a similar lumen output, such as the Ravemen CR300 or Cateye Volt 400, both are considerably more expensive.

Overall I liked many elements of this light and the automatic feature is really interesting, but it is complicated to use. It has a decent battery life, strong mounting system, and good light output, but is slightly let down by the frustration caused by trying to find your favourite mode.

Verdict

A light that performs really well, but the usability is a little too complex