I was 'Concerned' about comments about this system weight, but the entire system that sits on the bike weights in 1300 grams, which is far less than I expected and compares favorably with the Vista Nightsticks that I was running as these weight in at 1000 grams for two batteries and two head units have only 10w of output and last for (sometimes) 2 hours.

First turn on in the car park, everybody waits around expecting the sun to come out.... so we turn it on, and not a lot happens 5 seconds latter we get "well is that it .. that's crap, I'd send um back if I was you" 30 seconds later 'where are me sunglasses .. be careful those things will take me eye's out" These lights take a little time to get started, 5 seconds and they are virtually off, but they soon build up to near blinding output

Out on the trails and it soon becomes apparent that these things kick out one hell of a lot of light, they are bright, real bright, as there is so much light being chucked out, Cateye have wisely decided to make the unit a flood device and the output appears to have zero hot spots,and riding fireroad it's just like sunlight, but on twisty single track it does suffer the same problem that all bike mounted lights suffer from, when you look round the corner the bike lights are still looking where the front wheel is looking, granted it's far less of a problem than other bike lights as the wide/ bright beam of the Stadium soon catches up, but if you are used to running a head light, you might decide that is still worth doing. Adding a head light does of course bump up the weight penalty of this system, but you'll have a damn site more light than anybody else.

One slightly off putting thing (until you get used to it) is the lights sudden tendency to burn a slight red color for a second or two, it's something to do with the gas in the bulb and ho it is effected by changes in voltage, other people do tend to notice it more than you.

The manual states that the ballast unit should be mounted vertically between the top tube and the down tube, butted up as close to the steerer as possible, but this isn't going to a option on all frames, but this isn't really a issue, the device is fairly small, weighs nothing and comes with two long velcro straps, meaning that it can be mounted just about anywhere on a frame, I mount mine either horizontally on the top of the stem which is nice as you can see the power/battery life indicator, or horizontally where CatEye say it should be vertical, neither have given me any problem, and I've seen a lot more inventive ideas for different frame shapes.

I used the lights for the first real time in the 2003 Dusk Till Dawn race, along with a Vista NS5 mounted as a head lamp, one of the big advantages was that riders soon noticed you coming up behind them and got out of your way, but it wasn't like night riding, you can see everything in the area in front of you, it's not as good as riding in daylight as the shadows e.t.c are not as good. This leads me to my final observation, if you are buying these because you enjoy the thrill of riding at night with friends, think long and hard what it is about the night riding that you enjoy, these light might well be taking some that out of the ride, also are your friends still going to want to ride with you ?