Best bike lights: 5 picks for road, commute and club rides

The Strada is Exposure's road light, and it's the one to buy if your riding regularly takes you onto unlit lanes at speed. The beam is shaped to throw light down the road while keeping the top edge of the spread low, so you can read the surface ahead without flattening every driver coming the other way — the thing cheap high-output lights get wrong. The machined aluminium body feels like a tool rather than an accessory, and because Exposure designs and builds its lights in Hampshire, servicing and spares are straightforward. It is expensive, and on a lit town commute you'd be paying for performance you can't use.

This is the light we'd point most riders towards first: a big-output front light in a machined aluminium body, with USB-C charging and enough modes to cover everything from a bright daytime flash to a steady beam for a dark lane. The cut-outs around the lens mean you're visible from side roads and junctions, not just straight ahead — useful when you're crossing a busy junction at dusk. It's heavier than a small commuter light, and the beam is rounder than a road-specific cut-off, so on shared paths and busy lanes dip it or drop to a lower setting.

A rear light with a radar built in. Paired with a Garmin Edge — or another head unit that supports ANT+ radar — it shows approaching traffic as a marker on the screen and beeps as a vehicle closes in, so you know what's behind you before you can hear it and before you pull out round a parked car. As a light it's a proper rear unit with a bright, attention-grabbing flash, and it works with the Varia app if you ride without a computer. On start-stop city commuting the alerts come thick and fast, which is exactly when it's least useful.

A small, light front light that disappears on the bars and is light enough to live on a helmet for winter commuting. Five hundred lumens is plenty for lit streets, shared paths and the ride home through town, the bracket swaps between bikes in seconds, and CatEye's build quality means it keeps working after a winter of rain and salt. It isn't a light for unlit lanes at speed — the battery and the beam are simply smaller — but as a second light, a helmet light or the main light for a town commute, it's hard to argue with.

A rear light that fits anything: the stretchy integrated strap wraps round a seatpost, seat stay or rack without tools, so it moves between bikes in seconds. The flash patterns are genuinely eye-catching, which is the whole point of a be-seen light, and the sealed body copes with British weather. Battery life on the brightest patterns is the trade-off, and a light this easy to unclip is also easy for someone else to walk off with — so take it with you when you park.