Niterider MiNewt 600 review

Let's start with the good. This is an awesome little light. It's the ultimate flashlight - suitable for camping, hiking, power outages, and of course cycling. It's high-beam setting lights up the road or trail. Consider that a single car headlight (dipped) puts out about 1000 lumen and this light has a maximum output of 600 lumen you can guess how bright it is. Bring on the gnarly single-track. The beam pattern is excellent, just like all other MiNewt's I own (total 4). It's smooth, with no bright or dark spots, perfectly round, and gradually brightens in the middle.

It's has a lot of modes including 4 solid, 1 flashing, and 2 off modes (yes two). All are accessed with a single button. I could see being a bit brain-addled near the end of a long ride and getting confused.

The locked-off mode is a good idea. I can see that the button could easily get pressed while transporting the light in a gym bag. Best thing to do is carry it in the box it came in. I heard some people returned the light saying it didn't work because it ships in this mode. That's pretty retarded.

The flashing mode is too bright. I would use it in daylight especially around dawn or dusk but it's so bright that it causes distracting reflections on all sorts of stuff.

The walk mode is actually bright enough to ride at 15mph with and is possibly the most useful mode for me.

I test rode it last night on the brightest setting and it switched to low mode about 80 minutes into the ride. That's exactly what it was supposed to do.

Now for the bad.
The mount sucks. That's really the only word for it. I've never seen a light mount that didn't have some kind of force-multiplier to get a really good grip on the handlebar. Cateye uses a screw thread, Planet Bike uses a cam/lever, but this mount only grips the handlebar as hard as you can squeeze it. The light will not stay pointing in the direction I set it. Every couple of miles it droops down and I have to readjust it. The pavement was pretty smooth too. Off road would be dreadful. I have a 25.4mm handlebar - I've no idea if it's better on 31.8mm.

Perhaps a couple of turns of electrical tape would help but at $100+ I expect a much better mount.