Discussion: You can also

use it when you ride your bike in the dark. You know, if you need another reason to justify spending the $.

I'm not sure Ian should be riding a bike in the dark with or without lights... he's likely to injure himself

I'm not sure Ian should be ... ... ... he's likely to injure himself.

That's not what Neil's mom said last night at control 4 of the WHNO on Saturday night.

I'm certainly very fond of my Magicshine, which was about $70 including the free shipping, the rechargeable Li-ion battery, the charger, mounting for either bike handlebars or on a headband. It is advertised as 900 lumens, but probably is delivering more like 600 lumens on high beam with a 3-hour runtime and about half that for 6-7 hours on the low setting. I've used it mostly for bike commuting, but have also used it some for night skiing (not quite enough run-time for the whole night on a rogaine, but would be plenty for a regular night-O). It was purchased from DealExtreme in HongKong, and came with a variety of forms of mounting, so make sure you get one that includes a headband. The difference between 200 lumens and 600 lumens is actually pretty significant for me because of the far greater range of color vision with the brighter light. It's not quite the same quality of construction as the various $400 and up models, but I've used it almost daily (30-60 minutes a day) for a year or so by now and it seems to be holding up quite nicely. The delivery time was a little slow (two or three weeks), but if you don't need it urgently, it did eventually arrive!

If I were going to buy a light right now, based on the reviews from friends who have them, I would probably get a Magicshine.