wide angle lights

[perpetual dan]

Prompted by the hi vis thread and a few glasses of wine I spent 2 minutes in the garden last night seeing where you have to be to notice my two lights.

What I found:
The Fenix L2D is a very directional laser. That is OK - I helmet mount it, for my benefit. But, if I'm not looking at you then (more or less) you won't see it as a light.
The Cateye EL510 is good for about* 60 degrees from the front, with a much reduced light round to 90 degrees.

* = guessed after drinking, if I get round to measuring properly then I'm sure this will be proved inaccurate.

I know that wide angle bright LEDs aren't such a common component, which is probably a factor here. Maybe multiple LEDs improve things - or are they just to get more light out of cheap components? I suspect well designed mirrors and lenses are key though.

Does anyone have a sensibly bright, sensibly priced light that has close to +-90 degree (to the side) visibility, at close to front-on brightness?

[Cudzoziemiec]

If they have, I'd like to know about it too!

It seems to me that most bike lights are too directional - for my liking, at any rate. But a lot of people seem to like them that way.

[mattc]

You do realise that there is only a certain amount of light to go round?

The further out you smear it, the thinner it gets.

[vorsprung]

I don't specifically know about the fenix but the cateye lights all seem to have quite poor beam patterns, often with a hotspot

Just get a MTB light if you want an splatty mush of light
The Magicshine seems to get a good press on the Interweb these days
£60 and 900 lumens

[Zoidburg]

I run a 3W tesco at the minute, I needed a vision ring so I made one from a piece of white plastic document folder, the kind you get from the bank with application packs and the like.

Scissors and a bit of black electric tape did the job.