This review is a small part of our Best Mountain Bike Lights feature, where we tell you the three best lights - plus eight others to consider - after testing 24 different sets of lights.
One23’s ‘Batman’ design has a powerful spot beam, but poor power menu and bulky battery issues.
The Gotham hero-styled light houses wide spaced twin LEDs with the ‘ears’ providing the cooling fins in the centre. The quoted 2000 lumen output throws a serious amount of light down the trail but the dark really crowds in closely at the edge of the narrow beam, which can be distracting and tiring in visually ‘busy’ situations.
The One23's powerful, focused beam can be a bit on the tunnel-vision side
The four modes are controlled via a silicon ‘alien head’ switch on the back, which also acts as a low battery warning. Having a flashing and then totally off setting in the sequence between the two power modes is potentially a problem if you try to change output during a descent.
You get bar and helmet mounts in the box plus a hinged mystery mount. While the side mount cable looks slightly vulnerable it stops the cable being bent sharply by the clamp; a proven weak spot on other designs.
The hard case battery doesn’t increase run times but is harder to home than last year’s bag battery as it sticks out a long way either side of most frame tubes.
