Hope R4 bike light review

This review is a small part of our Best Mountain Bike Lights feature, where we tell you the three best lights – plus eight others to consider – after testing 24 different sets of lights.

Hope has finally delivered on its long-hinted-at potential with one of our favourite lights from those we’ve tested recently, and it’s just dropped the pricing to make it a killer deal too.

The Lancashire CNC-machined four-LED head unit has always given massive peripheral coverage for excellent trail context, from wheel to treetop, and bar end to bar end. The latest version adds decent depth for bombing descents, and considering the price, the on-trail and beam shot results are excellent.

The beautifully machined alloy (this is Hope we’re talking about) bar mount uses a multi-piece design to provide a stem-centred offset as well as tons of angle/height adjustment for dodging cockpit cables. You get an off-bike head harness too, and a helmet mount – though its tall height means you need to mount it cleverly to stop it catching low branches.

The R4 with the old-style plastic battery is still available, but the new ES battery is well worth the extra money in our opinion. The in-house machined metal battery case with green rubber-wrapped ends is definitely structural overkill, but it mounts OK (on top of the top tube works best) and looks totally ‘factory’.

Crucially, the battery now gets a push-button run-time indicator so you can keep an eye on the already generous run time. The three power settings are blissfully flash mode free too and recent Hope reliability has been excellent, making the pricing a steal.