Originally Posted by
woodway
Outbound Lighting makes a seriously good light that works well in daytime and nightime (called the Detour). For night use it has a cutoff, just like a car llight, so you don't blind oncoming drivers. For daytime, it has a mode that cycles the brightness up and down like you see on some motorcycles. Every other cycle it throws in a brief flicker. It's attention getting without being annoying like a flashing light. The light is thoughtfully designed, uses USB-C to charge and is simple to mount and dismount from your bike. Build quality and support are top notch. Mine was $180 but worth every penny. I have no relationship with outbound but as someone who was a fulltime, year round bike commuter for the last 20 years, I have tried many lights and this is by far the best one I've owned.
Outbound puts some serious engineering effort into their beam profile design. As a former optical engineer I really respect what they're doing. That said, for most applications I'm pretty happy with the simple beam profile produced by an LED in a parabolic reflector (or some array of such emitters and some simple optics). Outbound does put more "lumens where you want them", but charges a lot more for those well placed lumens. That value proposition may work for some riders and not for others.