The Chicago-based Outbound Lighting launched its original trail light in 2017 and now has the updated Trail Evo available separately or combined with the Hangover helmet light in the Downhill Evo package. The Trail Evo is new to us, so it hasn’t yet been featured in our best mountain bike lights article, but after this test, it should definitely be on your list of lights to check out.
Outbound sticks to six core principles when designing lights, and in a nutshell, they are to offer reliable, safe lights with suitable beam patterns for the intended use and realistic lumen output and run times. Their site has a great section about lumens, how the bike industry's general thinking that more is always better is flawed, and how they are rated using the FL1 standard. In accordance with this standard, the advertised lumens are actually only the average lumen output for the first three minutes of power.
