Moon Titan Mini light review: a compact light that doesn't inspire massive confidence after dark

SQUIRREL_13394309

The Moon Titan Mini is a compact, cuboid-shaped light with a flood-style illumination pattern.

Strapped under the handlebar, it takes up minimal space and there’s an optional remote if you want to use it under an out-front mount or on a helmet.

It’s a low-weight light with high ingress resistance, although the pronounced central spot and rather diffuse peripheral lighting reduce confidence when riding on unlit roads. At £46 / $60 / €53, it’s well priced.

• Summer's over – make sure you're seen with our buyer's guide to the best bike lights
  

Moon Titan Mini specifications and details

The Titan Mini is a compact front light with a boxy design. Its 700-lumen peak output is a little lower than that of the five lights I tested alongside it, but it’s the second lightest at 90g.

It’s supplied with a bar-strap mount, with a Garmin-style connection, along with a GoPro adaptor, enabling it to be slung under an out-front mount.

Optional accessories include a remote, which is potentially useful if you fit the light under a cycling computer, and a helmet mount.

There are six modes, three constant and three flashing, which are cycled through with a press of the small side-mounted control button.

There’s also a Variable Lumen System option, in which you can choose your own preferred output level.

The light has an IPX7 ingress rating, so it should handle wet commutes.

Moon Titan Mini performance

The Titan Mini has a pronounced central spot to its illumination, with a fainter halo around it.

The lighting pattern is fairly circular, so there’s not the directional spread of some of the lights I tested.

I found the lack of spread to the light pattern rather disconcerting. The spot is not large enough that you get a good feel for the road ahead, and the lack of illumination to the sides and further forward reduces your confidence to ride faster.

The runtime is good, with the light switching to a lower output level after 2 hours 15 minutes, although it became quite hot during a run-down test and might have heat-throttled itself.

The lowered output was quite dim, compounding the rather poor peripheral light spread.

Although you can mount the Titan Mini above your handlebar, its design is more geared to fixing under the bar or an out-front mount, where its compact size helps keep it out of the way.

This makes changing modes fiddlier, though, unless you’ve invested in the remote.

While some Moon lights enable you to set them up so they only toggle between high- and low-intensity settings, the Titan Mini doesn’t have this function, so you need to scroll through all six modes if you want to change your lighting level.

Again, this is not ideal for riding at night and I found I needed to slow down to cycle the light back to the highest-output setting after using it in a lower constant mode.

The light works rather better for daytime running, where its compact design and the option to mount below the bar means it doesn’t get in the way.

There’s a choice of three flashing modes, all with long runtimes claimed at between 30 and 75 hours.

Moon also offers its Variable Lumen System, which enables you to tailor the light output for each of the six modes.

Hold down the on/off button and the light will step through eight output levels, enabling you to set your preferred illumination.

It’s slightly fiddly, but a nice extra, enabling you to fine-tune your settings, should you wish.

Moon Titan Mini bottom line

For riding at night, the Moon Titan Mini underperforms a little relative to the competition, principally due to the spot illumination, which reduces your riding confidence.

It would serve well as a daytime-running light, though, with multiple flashing modes with good claimed runtimes.

SQUIRREL_13394309