Knowing this, the bicycle light companies have come up with catalogues of special, cycling specific lighting options to fit your needs.
Ten years ago, before the widespread use of inexpensive white LEDs and lithium batteries, a cycling specific light made by Cateye or Blackburn or Light & Motion really were better than whatever you could get at a department store or online, but things have changed.
Lets examine, first, the Bontrager Ion 120, made by Trek Bicycles. It's small, made of plastic, comes with an adjustable handlebar strap, 3 AAA batteries, and provides 120 lumens of light for up to six hours, more or less depending on whether it's in flashing mode or not.
All that, for $39.99
Let me repeat, that plastic bike light that runs off disposable batteries costs almost forty damn dollars.
Now lets compare to MY lighting solution:
Ignore that dumb little light above the fender, that's just there for style, what I want to talk about is the light on the handlebars.
The light, which provides 140 lumens, came from some nameless company on Amazon. It cost $18 with shipping. It features a durable aluminum casing, five different light settings (high, med, low, strobe, and SOS), 3 AAA batteries, is water resistant, AND has a rechargeable lithium ion battery that provides about 10 hours of light at full power. This isn't an advertisement, by the way, this was the first flashlight I saw when I went flashlight shopping; I'm sure there are better options.
The velcro-strap handlebar mount came from the hardware store, but you can get one online for about $8. In my opinion, it holds as well as any handlebar mount from a name brand.
That means I have a more durable, brighter, rechargeable light that shines for four hours more than the Bontrager Ion 120, and I got it for half the price.
Actually, I used to use a 100 lumen light on my handlebars that I got for free at the bank, but it got ruined after a couple winters outside.
I should mention that my lighting solution didn't take a lot of hunting and pecking around for parts either. Most websites and brick-n-mortar stores that sell flashlights will have everything you need all together, and if they don't you can ask for it.
Also, I don't mean to unfairly single-out Bontrager for price-gouging, Cateye, Blackburn, Lezyn... Everybody's guilty. Don't feel bad if you've fallen for the trap, I OWN A BONTRAGER ION 120, and it was an OK light, until it corroded from being left outside in the rain. The cheap flashlight in the pictures above has been left out in the rain just as many times, and it still works fine.
As for the back light, the ones you get from Target for $15 are about as good as the ones from the bike shop for $30. The internet has some cheaper, better options than both, though.
Unless you have some very specific need, bikes lights are an item that you not only don't need to get at the bike shop, but you shouldn't. Hardware store and internet solutions are cheaper, and usually work better too.
Agreed, overall. Some brief Internet searching will uncover decent lights for much less than the bicycle-specific name brands. Reliability, particularly of cheap rechargeable battery packs, which also may have safety issues, is a plausible area of discussion, but good lights themselves are so cheap now that they are almost at the level of disposable commodities rather than carefully chosen accessories.
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