Before reviewing this Magicshine Monteer 6500 SZeus offering, the last Magicshine light we tested was the Magicshine MJ-908 8000, a cheap-feeling plastic light with a low cost and high output. Since then Magicshine has upped its game and is now producing a machined aluminium lamp unit with a lot more power and a more sophisticated battery pack.

Read more: Best mountain bike lights – find your flow in the darkness

We’re going to get something out of the way early on – despite what it says on the label, this light does not have 6,500 lumens. It’s bright, but it’s no any brighter than the Nightrider Pro 4200 Enduro or Lupine Wilma R7 lights at 3,500. It does get five Cree LED units in the lamp, and the resulting light is white and crisp, but we couldn’t see any further down the trail with this light compared to the others. Not that this is a problem; it’s still powerful, and when you consider it’s only £270, the cost per lumen is still excellent. The lamp unit and beam pattern are actually very similar to the Seca Enduro, it even has the same spread close-in.

Magicshine’s previous light attached to the bar via a rubber O-ring, but the Magicshine Monteer 6500 Zeus has a machined aluminium clamp with a Garmin-style fitting. The premise here is you can run a computer during day and a light at night, and while the Garmin interface is neat and the mount doesn’t wobble, we turned the bike upside down once and it bent the flimsy adapter.

Although the real-world brightness doesn’t quite live up to the output claims, it still packs a hefty punch, and this puts it in the upper echelon in this test. If the mount was more stable, and the battery fuel gauge wasn’t hidden, we’d have added that crucial extra mark.