Hope District 3

Hope are well known for their CNC machined lights for the front of your bike, as well as clever innovations such as stems with integrated light mounts. Well now they’ve been at it for the rear of your bike too. Presenting the Hope District 3.

There are three things you should know about the Hope District. It’s one of the brightest rear lights on the market, it has a very natty seat post mounted bracket, and it can be run off the same battery as one of their Vision front lights (2 and 4 models only). It makes for an interesting proposition, solving three of our biggest bug bears with rear lights - too dim, bad mounts and too many batteries to look after. Just to show off its single battery front and rear setup, Hope sent a Vision 2 along with the District for us to have play with as a proper high-end commuter setup.

The district is a rather neat little unit using three LEDs in a triangle arrangement, encased in a black CNCd round housing. A nice chunky weatherproof rubber button allows you to cycle through a whole series of modes. You get bright-flashy, really-bright-flashy, really-bright-strobe, bright-constant and really-scary-bright-constant. In fact on max it’s a claimed 84 lumens, which doesn’t sound a lot by today’s MTB front light standards. But it’s still more powerful than many commuter front lamps, and we don’t recommend turning it on while looking directly at it that’s for sure!

Mounting is via a machined clamp which goes around the seatpost. Chunky plastic shims fit it precisely to your seatpost size and makes it a bit more carbon friendly. You get a 27.2, 30.9 and a 31.8 shim in the box. It does mean that you can’t use the District on anything aero-shaped though which is a shame, but Hope have said they’re thinking about it. Assuming you’re running a conventional seatpost, the clamp is a real breath of fresh air giving a stable and solid mount for the light. And if you’re leaving it in town, a quick twist and a pull removes the lamp from the bracket to save it from thieving hands.

Our only grumble with the clamp is that the vertical angle of the lamp cannot be adjusted meaning that depending on the slackness of your bike’s seat angle, the light will always be pointing somewhat at the ground a bit more than we’d like. We’re not suggesting we want to be pointing it up and dazzling drivers coming from behind, and the clamp as it is does stop reckless mounting. But we felt on bigger a-road jaunts with traffic coming at you from further behind, and at greater speed, just a bit more of an upward angle would be nice.

Speaking of which, the brightness is something we’ve got no issues with. Even on its lowest constant setting, the road at the rear of the bike is bathed in wide red glow, particularly effective in the wet. And at first it almost feels rude to turn it up to its highest setting, at least in town. Out on the big roads it’s nice to whack it up on high, and we felt we generally got a wider birth as a result (no scientific test admittedly). Approaching a District equipped bike from behind you get the impression you’re approaching a motorcycle not a push bike. And there are slots in the side of the housing giving some useful side on visibility too. The flashing settings are perhaps a bit much at night but they’re great in the daytime giving great visibility even on the brightest of days.

The battery cable splitter that allows you to run a front light from the same battery is a great idea. If you’re a door-to-door type commuter who doesn’t need to remove the lights, it’s great to be able to just unstrap one battery pack, stick it on to charge and slap it back on when you’re ready to ride. Conceptually we love it but the splitter cable is a little bit of a faff and it will take some fiddling and experimentation to get an ideal fit on the bike, and you’ll likely end up with a coil of cable around one of the bike’s main tubes. The main issue is that where the cable splits, one end essentially has to turn back on itself to go to either the front or rear light. A downtube placement seemed to offer the best fit although if you’re not running full length mudguards it puts it right in the firing line of the wet and muck. And even then we still never got it quite as right as we’d have liked when running the lights as a pair. Cable management grumbles aside, it was great to have the District and the Vision 2 on full whack while doing battle at drivetime, and overall it’s worth putting up with the cables. If you run the District on its own it’s a much cleaner setup.

The battery pack is one of Hope’s rubber coated Li-ion batteries with velcro fastener. It was kind on the frame and stayed put throughout the test. It seems pretty overkill having an external battery pack but with this level of output and an 11 hour burntime, it’s not going to be practical to mount any kind of self contained unit of that size off the back of the bike. Hope claim 104 hours of burntime if used on the lowest flashing setting. We’ll be honest, it wasn’t practical to test the burntimes and we mostly just charged it once a fortnight because it “probably needed it”. 

The District’s boast-worthy output does come with something of a price-tag. A quick random survey of riders confirmed that your average commuter is going to find the £165 price tag rather steep! However, existing Hope light users can buy in a little cheaper as the District can be had without a charger for £140, and if you forgo the battery as well the District comes in at £95 for just the lamp, bracket and cables (inc splitter).

But of our survey, where the District really got the most attention was with the ‘competitive’ cyclist, or rather those that tend to train on the roads in the winter at night. £165 for something that’s going to get you seen by an approaching HGV, from a mile behind on an A-road, was a price that many thought was more than fair. And this might be the reason that Hope should get some kind of aero friendly clamp sorted soon, as we failed to fit it to both a Cervelo and a BMC, the only road bikes we had access to at the time!

The “is it or isn’t it too much light” and the “who’s going to spend that much money on a rear light” debate will probably rage away on the internet for a while to come yet. For us it comes down to a simple case of “will it make you feel safer” (it did for us) and “what price do you put on that”. We think those in the winter training market are going to see this as a good investment.

The District is a well-made, quality bit of kit, and it really is the brightest thing out there. Whether you’re a paranoid commuter or a winter trainer wanting ultimate viability on A-roads, then the District is for you. A bit of a rethink on the cable splitter and an aero-friendly option on the clamp and it’d be near as dammit perfect!

Seriously bright and fantastic build quality.

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