Hope Technology are essentially a mountain bike component manufacturer, they built their business on hubs but also build mighty fine disc brakes and a whole host of useful aluminium widgets. But their latest light design will be a big hit whatever type of rider you are. A 10 watt Metal Halide lamp and Li-ion battery provides a stupidly bright beam. The very neat quick release battery pack allows you to carry a spare in a pocket and have enough power for the whole night, so it should be a popular choice for (very rich) Audax riders. 2.5 hrs minimum running time and an ‘intelligent’ charging system. Neatly machined and totally waterproof. There is a tilting mechanism for perfect positioning (no fiddly brackets) and it will be available for 31.8mm stems. The fixing cap has the same bolt centres as a Thomson stem, so you can fix it to a more ‘road’ style stem that has more sizes available. It’s only available in Black, not as shown. Price is suspected to be in the £300-£400 region.
The new Aheadstem is also CNC machined from a solid lump of 2014 T6 aluminium. It has a angled slot at the rear and is carbon steerer friendly. Priced at £60 it’s pretty competitive Limited sizes at present (50, 70, 90, 110mm) and only in 0°, 10° and 25° rises. Sadly the HOPE logo is Mountain bike friendly and not unidirectional for inverting for road use. Hopefully (excuse the pun) there will be more road sizes as demand increases. At this level of quality and price that will probably be very soon. For more information go here |
