The Hope R8 remains relatively unchanged from the light we tested a year ago.

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It comes with a machined clamp with double tilt adjustment that lets you mount the lamp unit low down in front of the stem. This eliminates any shadows thrown by the front wheel and also frees up precious bar space for other hardware.

Unfortunately, Hope only includes a 31.8mm diameter clamp in the box with the R8, so if you run 35mm bars you will need to spend £32.80 on an adapter.

Hope’s Li-Ion battery gets a handy fuel gauge with a new ‘test feature,’ so you can check how much juice is left before a ride. The soft rubber green jacket is a nice touch, but we’d like to see a more contoured shape, so it fits frame tubes better.

The R8 has two light modes — Race and Trail — and in Race mode it pumps out 2,833 lumens on full beam. This setting does away with the annoying flashing mode and also means you don’t have to toggle through a long sequence if you just want to dim the light for a climb.

With eight LEDs, the Hope R8 is bright and has a wide spread and excellent reach. There’s plenty of fill-in light but we’d like the option to tune the brightness to reduce some of the bounce back and glare.

It’s great value but the lamp is a little weighty and the battery could do with a better mounting solution and slightly longer cable.