Recently, I reviewed the Lezyne Lite Drive 700XL, and the light impressed in pretty much every area that matters when you’re on the road. The Micro Drive 500XL, for all intents and purposes, performs like a downsized version of that model – a great all-rounder, just condensed into a smaller package.
In fact, if you take a look at our pros and cons, you’ll notice they’re precisely the same, with the exception of nine available lighting modes, instead of eight in the Lite Drive. It operates in the same way via a single button on the top of the device, which cycles through the various static and flashing modes, including Lezyne’s disruptive Day Flash, which strobes at 500 lumens for a claimed burn time of 7:30 hours.
If you want the Micro Drive to utilise the full 500 lumens through the Overdrive static mode, then you’ll get 60 minutes of claimed burn time. In reality, as long as the light doesn’t overheat, it will stay on the full Overdrive setting for around 30 minutes, before losing a very small amount (yet noticeable) amount of brightness as the charge level begins to drain. It’s still very bright and to all intents and purposes hangs on well until the 75-lumen ‘get-you-home’ Economy mode kicks in for around 30 minutes before completely expiring.
