Originally Posted by jralbert

Thanks, Burton - that's really helpful. My commute's only about 45 minutes long, an hour if I'm really dogging it on the heavy rain bike, and there are segments of that ride that are on lit streets as well, so I think 1.5hrs of full-power lighting ought to be sufficient for my requirements. I liked the look of these lights particularly because it looks like the battery is removable and therefore at least replaceable - Cygolite does offer replacement batteries on their site. The fickle nature of lithium ion batteries is well known to me from the day job, but I can deal with the need to replace batteries every few years if the lamp itself is reliable and does the job.

It's good to know that the temptation to buy some 2200 lumen monster from an unknown manufacturer on the pacific rim for sixty bucks is not well founded.

My inclination at the moment is to buy just one of the 500s and see if I feel underlit, with the option to pick up either of the two above-mentioned lights as a supplementary illuminator depending on how dark things seem.

Thanks for the advice!