Cateye Orb Bar End Set

Cateye's Orb Bar End lights are a neat addition to the lighting setup on your bike, and while they aren't super-bright they are noticeable, well made and relatively cheap. They might even offset some close passes.

• Pros: Easy to fit, robust, distinctive
• Cons: Handlebar drop needs to be precisely aligned for best performance

I'm not going to start off with massive claims about how these Orbs made every car give me masses of space when overtaking, as there is no way of knowing. Maybe they helped a little by giving a clearer distinction to some drivers of just how wide you are in the dark, but in general road manners remained the same.

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I like having them on the bike, though. It's just another little part of the arsenal to help to be seen and even with their minimal output of just 5 lumen they are actually quite noticeable.

You even get a little bit of side visibility.

First, though, you need to make sure that the bottom of your handlebar drop runs parallel with the road; as with any LED, the Orbs need to be pointing directly at the intended target (i.e. a driver's eyes) for best effect. If you have your bar at an angle or yours doesn't have a full rounded drop then you will be losing a lot of performance as the light shines at the floor.

Each light comes supplied with a CR2032 coin style battery. They're quite common, so price/replacement isn't much of an issue.

They'll last for a while anyway (depending on how often you ride, obviously) with run-times of 50 hours on constant and 100 on both the fast and slow flash modes. These claims are pretty close to what I achieved with the original batteries, and as they wear out the LEDs just get a little dimmer.

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To turn them on and scroll through the modes, you just click the lens. It's a defined click too, so you can feel what you are doing even through thick winter gloves.

The Cateyes are well made, coming with an aluminium body rather than plastic for their 20 quid asking price. They withstood all the rain they saw plus my own power shower test with ease.

Fitment is easy too. You just remove your standard bar tape plugs and push these on in place. As long as your bar inner diameter is between 18mm and 22.5mm they'll be a good, firm fit.

There aren't many of this type of light on the market to compare them with for value, but I think they're worth the money, mostly for the build quality and ease of use rather than all-out brightness.

For the same price you could go for the Moon Meraks, which have the same rrp but slightly shorter like-for-like run-times. They do have a daylight running 15 lumen, though, if you want something a bit brighter.

Overall, I think the Orbs are a neat little package, and offer plenty of brightness.

Verdict

Simple extra lights that provide some indication of width to overtaking traffic