Originally Posted by
meanwhile
12 hours on steady is the wrong point to test a bright 2 or 4x AAA light. Any decently bright light will have almost exhausted its cells by then. My state of the art 2xAA non-bike light burns through 90% of the its cells capacity in less than 2 hours on its brightest setting.
The quoted runtimes for the mars is 50 hours on steady. 12 hours is a full winters night ride so a reasonable point to compare lights at.