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review

Knog Blinder Road R70

7
£48.99

VERDICT:

7
10
Excellent rear visibility but much less eye-catching from the side and rather pricey
Weight: 
47g

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The Knog Blinder Road R70 puts its cards on the table right from the outset – if this was a feeble little flasher you'd be pretty disappointed, right? Sure enough, point it into your eyes and it'll have you seeing spots every time you blink. [Disclaimer: don't point it into your eyes.] It provides excellent visibility to road users behind you, although the side visibility is nowhere near as good as some alternatives.

The lowest of the LEDs is crazy, eye-hurtingly bright, with its output focused through a collimated lens such that it is mostly directed horizontally when the light is fitted at typical seatpost angles. It's a pretty directional focus, so you ideally wouldn't fit it to seatstays or a vertical bit of your rack as the angle would be all wrong.

> Find your nearest dealer here

> Buy this online here

The other three LEDs are less potent but they combine to offer a range of eye-catching modes and a claimed 70 lumens output. There's a constant on, fast flash, an up-and-down "chaser" and a super-long-life eco-flash. The "peleton" (sic) mode consists of the middle two LEDs on constantly, to avoid irritating those cycling immediately behind you – a good option for winter club riding. Mode memory is good to see, so it switches back on in the mode you were last using.

That focused lower light would make this a top choice for where you want to be seen a long way back by those coming up behind you. Think a winter commute on a dual carriageway or an evening time-trial. For urban use, you want to be visible from all directions, and this is where the Blinder isn't as good. At about 45 degrees to each side there is still plenty of light visible, but not nearly as much once you're past 60 degrees. There is a vertical strip of red plastic on each side, out of which some light escapes, but there are other lights that are an awful lot better in this respect.

Run and charge

Battery life is decent for something so bright – 3.5 hours on constant and up to 20 hours if you choose the eco-flash mode. It's USB rechargeable, pretty much a given in decent rear lights nowadays, although the mechanism is unusual. The plastic tongue of a full-size USB type-A connector forms part of the attachment used to fix the light to your bike. You can plug it straight into your laptop or phone charger, although you'd probably want to give it a good wipe first. Knog says that it's completely waterproof and it certainly looks well-sealed, doing away with the usual need for a rubber bung to protect the more common micro-USB sockets.

Fitting it to your seatpost is very straightforward. There are three chunky silicone bands, meaning it will fit anything from a really old-school 22mm seatpost to a modern aero post. There's a narrow groove down the back of the light designed to hold it in place if you do fit it to something teardrop shaped. The silver plastic catch might look a bit superfluous, but it does make it a little easier to fit than lights that just make do with an o-ring.

The power switch is located at the top, on the back of the light. Either side of it are a couple of small LED indicators, one red and one green. The red light warns you (quite discreetly) when the battery is getting low, and both are used when charging – red meaning charging and green meaning full.

Summer storage

One other unusual feature is a "storage" mode, which can be activated when you're not going to use it for a while. It drains the battery to an optimum level for longer term storage – maybe during the summer months. This seems like a good idea and will hopefully mean you get a good few years' use before it needs replacing.

Generally the build quality is good, as you'd hope with an RRP of almost £50. It feels like a quality unit and it's had no issues with water ingress despite some real soakings on my seatpost. Note that there are older and cheaper versions of the Blinder rear light that look rather similar to this; without the super-bright lower LED the overall output is much lower, though.

> Check out our guide to the best rear lights here

As I've suggested, for certain sorts of riding, the focused and very bright lower beam of the Blinder does a really good job, if a pretty pricey one (at RRP). If you'll be regularly riding in urban environments then I would suggest that there are better alternatives. Principally, I would want more light visible from the sides – here, some does escape through those red strips but just not enough to be noticed in a busy street.

If you're going to spend this much (or even quite a lot less), there are no shortage of lights with much wider-angle outputs, such as the Cateye Rapid X range or the Moon Shield, and that's where my money would probably go.

Verdict

Excellent rear visibility but much less eye-catching from the side and rather pricey

road.cc test report

Make and model: Knog Blinder Road R70

Size tested: n/a

Tell us what the product is for, and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?

Knog says: "Delivering a colossal 70 lumen strobe on the rear, the Blinder Road R is the first Blinder lights of their kind to give riders 100% visibility and freedom at night, all from a super-compact, USB rechargeable, waterproof, integrated silicone package."

Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?

LIGHT OUTPUT : 70 lumens

DIMENSIONS : 27 x 76 x 52mm.

WEIGHT : 52g

MATERIALS : Polycarbonate housing and PMMA Lens. Hard-anodised aluminium fascia. UV-Resistant silicone.

BATTERY : USB Rechargeable Lithium Polymer

RUN TIMES: 3.5 hours in Steady mode, 4 hours in Fast, 5 hours in Chaser, 13 hours in Peleton Mode and 20 hours in Eco-Flash

BIKE ATTACHMENT : Tool-less attachment for standard rear posts measuring 22-32mm.

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
9/10

Good quality package with nice aluminium front and rubberised back.

Rate the product for performance:
 
7/10

Very good visibility from the rear, less good from the side. Good battery life.

Rate the product for durability:
 
9/10

No indication of any issues; battery saver mode should hopefully help the built-in battery last longer.

Rate the product for weight (if applicable)
 
9/10

It's pretty light; most rear lights are!

Rate the product for value:
 
3/10

£50 is quite pricey for a rear light given that you can get a perfectly adequate AA-powered flasher for £10 and a rechargeable light for £20.

Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose

Pretty well, although when I was riding in urban environments I used another light to give better side visibility.

Tell us what you particularly liked about the product

Very good range from the rear, good variety of modes, mode memory and easy attachment.

Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product

I would want more side visibility if I was going to use this light without a backup.

Did you enjoy using the product? Um, I guess

Would you consider buying the product? No

Would you recommend the product to a friend? If they were a time-trialler then yes.

Use this box to explain your score

It's a really well-made light which does an excellent job in some circumstances. However for that kind of money, the lack of good side visibility is hard to overlook.

Overall rating: 7/10

About the tester

Age: 37  Height: 190cm  Weight: 78kg

I usually ride: Commuter - something with disc brakes, drop bars and a rack  My best bike is: Rose X-Lite CRS

I've been riding for: Over 20 years  I ride: Most days  I would class myself as: Expert

I regularly do the following types of riding: road racing, time trialling, cyclo-cross, commuting, touring, club rides, sportives, general fitness riding, fixed/singlespeed, mountain biking

Jez spends his days making robots that drive cars but is happiest when on two wheels.  His roots are in mountain biking but he spends more time nowadays on the road, occasionally racing but more often just riding. 

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3 comments

Avatar
davel | 8 years ago
0 likes

Same experience, Redvee - great lights, crap attachments - but this strap/fastener appears to be a bit different from the (front) Blinder I bought about a year ago.

If the straps and fasteners will take the beating of everyday use, it's a decent range.

Avatar
Redvee | 8 years ago
0 likes

I've used Knog lights in the past cause of their simplicity with USB charging which I could do in work if needed via a PC, like most people seemed to do with their phones, and the simple bracket which in fact turned out to be the downfall of the lights in my experience. Given that the rear light I was using was £40 I removed it when I got into work and put it back on when I left and the constant removing and refitting to the seatpost led to the silicon band developing a split. The first time it happened I put it down to a bad sample but when the same fate befell the replacement light I opted for a refund rather than replacement.

Avatar
Mungecrundle | 8 years ago
0 likes

Having used one of these for a few weeks now...

On the limits of being absurdly bright. This does indeed seer dots across your retina from 20 paces and I'd suggest that it is possibly overkill for night time riding, being more likely to irritate a following road user. May be more appropriate as a daytime beacon and does have the advantage of still being visible through a layer of grime. The mounting arrangement is really well thought out being secure, quick to mount / dismount and 3 bands of different lengths are provided to cope with a range of mounting tube sizes and aero posts. The lowest, largest LED is angled up slightly to offset the slope of a seatpost. The USB recharge is straight forward.

The translucent plastic strip running around the sides of the light could do with being brighter if its purpose is to be noticed by road users from the side. Overall the unit seems robust and discrete. The on/off/mode button is probably too small to reach and fiddle with while on the move, but easy enough to get to before setting off.

Modes - lots but appears to be missing the most obvious i.e a combination of solid plus flashing, e.g the 3 smaller LED being fixed and the large one in flash mode. And whilst there is a mode to display just 2 of the smaller LED which reduces the overall light output, the whole thing could do with a 50% brightness mode.

Can't say that it keeps cars any further back when I'm riding round town, but any claim of not noticing the cyclist would be met with incredulity although a mitigating excuse of temporary blindness caused by the light itself might not be.

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