Originally Posted by
zacster
Flashlights come with a variety of lenses. Some are narrow beam, some are wide beam, and you can get shaped beams too. My flashlight is as bright as my Lezyne Super Drive. The Lezyne has a slightly shaped beam, but nowhere near as shaped as my B&M Cyo premium, which points all light to the road.
That's the beauty of lights like your B&M and my Phillips Saferide, all the light is used to light up the road instead of tree tops, which means less energy is used to throw the same amount of light on the ground as does others.
For the OP, If you look a this comparison and look at the amount of light brightness that is actually on the ground and on the lower half of the fence you'll see that the Philips Saferide is as bright as lights costing twice as much... the fact is though that light only puts out 220 or 230 actual lumens compared to with over a 1000 the others have to put out! I'm sure it's the same thing with the B&M because they both use a shaped beam. See:
http://reviews.mtbr.com/2012-bike-li...pattern-photos The Philips can now be bought for $80 in black on Amazon.
Here are some more comparisons, just find the brightest light you can for the $50 range you want:
http://reviews.mtbr.com/2013-bike-li...rd-beam-photos
http://www.performancebike.com/bikes...ghtBuyersGuide
http://www.modernbike.com/guide.asp?...singleshotplus
http://www.ivanhoecycles.com.au/ligh...t/cat_259.html