As I said, I ordered the Strada. Extremely pleased after the first ride on it. Since 97-100% of my riding in the dark will be on the road, I went with the headlight they developed for road riding. And as with all Exposure lights, the light is self-contained with internal batteries.
Two things make it more specific to road riding. 1) The beam is wider than their other lights which is really nice for lighting up the shoulders and ditches. I think that could be very useful in a situation where perhaps an animal was about to dart out in front of you. 2) It has a high/low setting where the low is actually angled downwards, which means it's not in the eyes of oncoming motorist. Another nice feature associated with this is the external switch (see below) that can be mounted on your bars near where you rest your hands, allowing you to switch between high and low without taking your hands off the bars. I noticed this morning that all but one oncoming motorist who were approaching me with their bright lights on dimmed them when I switched the light to the low setting.
The switch on the light is actually backlit, and the color of the backlight is your battery indicator. The color changes from green to amber to red to red flashing to let you know the amount of charge remaining. The plug near the switch, where the external switch plugs, can also be used for plugging in extra batteries for longer burn time or Exposure's rear 80 lumen taillight. With regards to burn time, the claimed times for this light are 3 hours on high/10 on low/ and "days" on flashing. I haven't verified these numbers yet.
The aluminum quick release mount is also high quality and the lights come with a nice carrying case.
The light is claimed to put out 480 lumens on high and half that on low. The light was more than bright enough for even the darkest roads, and even on a 40 mph + descent, I never felt like I was going to outrun my light.
So, after my first ride with the Exposure Strada, I give the light a
and
Linear Mode
