LED Bike Tail Light with Laser Safety Lane Review

This Groupon special caught my eye and I ordered 2. The lights arrived fairly quickly and looked OK.

http://gizmodo.com/5943831/laser-bike-light-creates-your-own-tron-like-virtual-lane

https://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-led-bike-tail-light-with-laser-safety-lane

I discovered that on one of my bikes that the rear rack interfered with the laser lane being able to project to the ground, so I gave one to a friend to separately evaluate the light.

My pros and cons:

Pro: Bright when using fresh batteries, 7 settings for rear LED - continuous or combinations of flashing or sequential on / off of the 5 LEDs; laser lane, 2 settings either on or blinking.

Con: Seat post clamp not strong enough to keep position constant when going over a sharp bump; manufacturing defect on one seat post clamp - kept from full seating of light into seat post bracket until I fixed it; uses 2 AAA rather than AA batteries.

Sarah's evaluation:

Positive things: lots of light settings, easy battery type for replacement, detachment feature to prevent theft.

Negative things: it would be nice if the loop attaching to the bike seat was adjustable, since mine was too loose. Also, would be nice if it had some kind of rubber like material to prevent it from turning/moving while riding.

.......
I installed my tail light a couple of weeks ago and was surprised today that it wouldn't turn on. Used a multimeter and discovered that when my unit is off that it actually draws 2.7 mA.

When the laser was on continuously, it drew 34 mA and ~20 mA when flashing.
The 5 LEDs drew 16 mA when on continuously and ~8 mA when in the other
settings.

I will be pulling the batteries out when not in use and likely modifying the light to run off an external source with a separate on / off switch and likely adding a support to keep the light from changing its angle setting.

Overall evaluation:

Good idea for implementing laser projected lanes, but not so good implementation,

$2.43 delivered on Aliexpress. Identical in every respect to the gizmodo my buddy pai $15. Worth $2.43.

Now $2.40 Shipped!

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Laser-Tail-Light-Bicycle-Rear-Lamp-Bike-High-quality-5LED-2Laser-7-flash-mode-Cycling-Safety/32385445318.html

I liked this version better as its rechargeable. But the internal batteries have no protection and will discharge themselves to death. The red leds are super bright to the point of annoying people.

http://www.dhgate.com/product/led-laser-bike-light-diamond-jewel-cycling/201719915.html

I bought these lights from groupon as well and grossly overpaid for them.

1. both of the lights, i received did not function correctly when they arrived. One of the did not work at all and when I opened the light, the wire that connected the battery to the circuit board had a bad solder joint so I resoldered it and it now works. The other has a defective laser on one side that was not repairable. So in my limited experience, the device has a 100% defect rate.

2. Even when the lasers are working, they are not bright enough to be seen on streets when car headlights are on. This makes the laser pretty much useless for the purpose of increasing visibility. They look cool and seem like they would be visible but I got into my car and followed my friend with this light on and you can only see the laser line if you're looking for it. It certainly isn't going to improve your visibility to cars at night unless they have their headlights off (which if you're dealing with cars at night without headlights, you got bigger issues)

3. The light is relatively long and heavy and when attached to the seatpost with the mount given, there is a lot of pressure put on the mount point and the mount point plastic breaks and the light falls off. This happened to both of the lights after about 200 miles of riding. I ride my bike >100 miles a week so basically, each light lasts about 2 weeks before the mount point plastic fails from the road vibration. No serious cyclist will be able to get more than a few weeks of use out of one of these lights.

I’ve tried these and while kinda cool looking when they work it’s like those lighted tire valve caps. They add very little practical value. Actually, lighted tire valves are probably more practical than these things.

As you learned there’s all sorts of mounting issues to deal with for the laser to display on the road.

I bought 3 of these cheap ass things and a year later none of ‘em work properly.

I reviewed one of these too. Lots of teardown photos!

http://syonyk.blogspot.com/2016/02/teardown-analysis-and-destruction-of-5.html