Renowned for its top notch disc brakes and hubs, Lancashire-based Hope Technology has recently expanded into lights, with the addition of its Vision range. Hope made the first steps into high-end lighting with the Vision HID some years ago, but it's now entirely focusing on the latest LED technology, with three lights meeting different price and performance criteria. Everything is machined and manufactured in-house, which has allowed Hope to turn its range around really rather quickly - here's a run through what's on offer.
Vision 1
Vision 1
The dinkiest light in the range, the Vision 1 uses one high power LED to provide 240 lumens of trail illumination. The simplicity of the light is that inside the beautifully CNC machined lamp body is space for 4x AA batteries. With typical rechargeable batteries, Hope claim a burn time of nearly 3-hour. Four modes increase this burn time up to a possible 42-hours.
Replacing batteries is easy via a knurled cap on the back of the unit, with rubber sealing preventing water ingress. Hope supply a universal handlebar clamp which can be fitted to any size bar with the appropriately sized rubber gubbins fitted. There's also a helmet mount and a lanyard which attaches to a small loop on the rear of the unit, should you want to use it off the bike.
Price £79
Vision 2
Vision 2
Next up the range is, unsurprisingly, the two LED unit which shoves out 480 lumens from the compact CNC machined unit, and is powered by a 7.4v Li-ion battery. Max burn time is 1hr 45mins, but Hope offer an “Endurance” version which, with the two supplied batteries, takes burn time up to 4hrs, or the “Epic”, which with one larger battery ekes out 4hrs 15mins. The smart charger tops the batteries back up in around 6-hours.
The small lamp unit is decked out with cooling fins and a large rubber button on the back switches the light on, off and cycles through the four available lighting modes. A short fully sealed power cord plugs into the diddy battery pack, and there's a length of extra hose in the box should you want to route the battery a long way from the lamp unit, or even inside your hydration pack if you decide to make use of the helmet mounting bracket. If you happen to run a Hope stem, a stem mount is available.
Price £195 (Endurance £250)
Vision 4
Vision 4
Last time BM saw Hope's new 4 LED light it was still a lump of mocked up nylon, but things have moved on since then and the full production items are now readily available. This light uses four LED's to thump out an impressive 960 lumens, and Hope have packed the lamps close together with the entire unit little bigger or heavier than the Vision 2. Running in the brightest mode you should get a claimed 2hrs 15mins, or opt for the two battery “Endurance” package and that figure rises to 4hrs 30mins.
To ensure there's a good spread of light, three of the LED's are spots and the fourth is a flood, so you get an impressive and usable area of lighting on the trail. Heat build can often be a problem with packing so much power into a small unit, but Hope have taken care of this with its “thermal throttling” technique, which monitors the temperature of the aluminium heat sink and restricts the power supply should it reach a unacceptably high temperature level. The Vision 4 weighs 415g and is supplied with a universal handlebar clamp and helmet mount.
Price £299 (Endurance £350)
www.hopegb.com
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