For me that puts this light into commuting territory - battery life isn't long enough to be useful on longer rides, or for anything but short off-road jaunts. You get about 1.5 hrs on high, 4 hrs on low and 2 hrs on flashing.

I found the stated battery performance to be pretty accurate. With gloves on, the button can be a tad fiddly, but not overly so. A quick double-push switches it to hyperconstant (this is the low setting with flashing on high), another push and you're back in constant mode. Push the button again and it cycles through high and low. Push the button for 2 seconds and the light switches on in whichever high or low mode you last used. Switching on and off, and cycling through lighting modes, is taken care of by a single button on the back of the unit. Having said that, I did find that at times the weight of the light would test the bracket's ability to stay put though when it did start to droop, it's easy enough to give the thumbwheel an extra half turn. The bracket is Cateye's universal mount, which is a bonus if, like me, you've got a few of those kicking around - it makes it really easy to swap Cateye lights around on your fleet of bikes. Side visibility without being blinded: perfect.

Mounted on the top of drop bars, this includes the drops, as evidenced by huge shadows of shifters to your right and left as you're riding along. The beam pattern is cleverly designed to illuminate practically everything forward of the light. Go for the high setting on dark lanes, low where there's a bit of ambient light and hyperconstant (that's strobe to you and me) in traffic. I could tell you that the Nano Shot Plus boasts 600 lumens, but I'd rather tell you about its beam pattern, and its performance in Real Life: it chucks out plenty of light. Amazingly, it manages to kick out more than twice as many lumens for the same price the Nano Shot was then (it's around £60 now). Cateye's Nano Shot Plus front light is the bigger, brighter sibling of the Nano Shot we reviewed, and liked, last year.

Modern cateye frames