Phil85207

It looks like Magic Shine lights for a lot more money.
I have the Magic Shine and love them, one for the helmet and one on the bar.

BetweenRides

You should probably contact Mountain Bike Forums - seems to be the best place for light evaluation through their light shootout:

https://reviews.mtbr.com/blog/category/lights-shootout/

crhilton

I think cat eye came out with one this year.

ThomasAndrew

https://www.cateye.com/en/product_detail/598

Cool light... has a standard battery back up.

2manybikes

Try Googling "solar bike light" I stopped looking at them after seeing three different ones. There is one that I saw five years ago too. Nothing new.

hillzofvalp

..

Editz

Thought I'd throw in this one if you have a "money is no object" criterion:

https://www.king-cart.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi

Cyclist0383

Your link doesn't work.

Editz

Sorry. Try this:

https://elektrolumens.com/Kong/Kong-12.html

Thigh Master

My Jet Lite A-51 just arrived (700 lumen, bomb proof, $199). Very high quality build. It will be my lifesaver for long, down the mountain commute at night.

What I want to stress is that the the customer service was over the top today. I had questions that weren't answered in the instructions, emailed the company yesterday, and the owner, David Joseph, wrote back and said to call him! I did and we had a very "illuminating" conversation about the light. He also added that they will be updating the instructions, dialing them in with the arrival of new products this spring.

BattleRabbit

I need an inexpensive tail light that I can mount on my rear rack... My old mount was on the seat tube(5 LED light, great visibility even though it was mounted behind the seat stays) and won't be visible with my new rack setup. Are there any that have bolt in mounts that could fit on a reflector mount point? That would be most handy.

ThomasAndrew

A couple of things to keep in mind...depending on the rack you own, there are some better and not so better solutions.

Reflector Mount Bolts - if you have basic reflector mounts then I would say try to find one of the older CatEye Reflex or TL-LD500 taillights. They are the only one that are a real reflector and also pretty good flashing lights. I like the idea of a passive ( real reflector ) aspect of the light.

The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the rack companies are moving towards a mounting system that is standard in Europe. This has a two bolt mount that fits horizontally on the rack. I know some light companies are also making mounts for their lights that fit this new rack system.

I use a new version of the Reflex with this...https://www.cateye.com/store/parts.php?cid=3_30

I wish all this would be standard and we would not need to have adaptors!

AustinShredman

I have never been happier than with my FlashBak rear light. I ride an Xtracycle, and I clip it on the back. The remote power switch blinks with the lights, so I always KNOW when my back lights are working. Very cool. Amber in color, cuts thru darkness or fog much better. 4 Metal clips hold that sucker on...I've lost a lot of little red blinkies, because of the dumb little plastic clips. No more.

tshelver

For a modern / current taillight with a reflector, what about the Portland Designs Radbot 1000?
Comes with rack mount as well as two other mounts. Gets great reviews, and brighter than the PB Superflash. I may put down some money for one, as my Trice OEM rack has the standard Euro mount points as well as a few other options.

For an affordable steady rear light, about the best I have found is a red 200+ lumen LED Ultrafire flashlight with one of the better DealExtreme bike mounts. I've got mine mounted to a rear crossbar on my rack at the moment, but had it on the seat back before.
The flashlight is solid aluminum 'tactical' style, the bike mount is plastic, but for $12 for the entire package shipped to my home, that is pretty much a bargain.
Batteries are extra, but that goes for most of them.

As for knowing whether it is on or off, not a problem at night, it lights up the road behind me, easily visible in the rearview mirror. Street signs are visible for 100s of yards.

I use a blinky for backup and long battery life, and the Ultrafire to wake up the motorists.

ThomasAndrew

"For a modern / current taillight with a reflector, what about the Portland Designs Radbot 1000?"

I am kind of a stickler on this point about "reflector". I don't own a Portland Design Dadbot but I might just go out and get one and test the "reflective" part of the light.

It appears clearly this design does have more of a REAL reflector than the Super Flash that has some fancy diamond molding that provide NO reflective capabilities.

2manybikes

The reflector does work. It's much better than the other tail light reflectors, but not quite as bright as a bike reflector. The Radbot also has a better wider beam than the Super flash.

ThomasAndrew

2manybikes - exactly my point about "tail light reflectors". In fact most have little or no reflective capability and are just molded design features that give unsuspecting buyers the impression they are getting some reflectivity when they are not. I am not sure how the PD Radbot measures against required bike reflectors but I know the old Cat Eye Reflex and new Auto lights are supposed to be full on bike reflectors. I just wish the new Auto ones had the same mounting on the back that the original did.

Cyclist0383

The reflector on the Radbot 1000 meets EU standards, so it's not simply a rubbish piece of plastic. Mine works just fine as a reflector. That being said, the light far outshines the reflector, making it rather useless while the light is on.

socalrider

Wayne sells great lights but the KONG is huge and not practical for use on a bike.. The EDC-mce or EDC-XML are a better choice for bike riding.

https://elektrolumens.com/EDC-XML/EDC-XML.html

tshelver

If you are looking at a free or cheap Office suite, you should be aware that SUN was bought by Oracle, and that OpenOffice development is now controlled by Oracle.

Most of the developers have left and forked OpenOffice to create a new codebase, LibreOffice (Free or Liberty office).
One comparison: https://www.infoworld.com/d/applicati...e-716?page=0,2

LibreOffice is now what is being shipped as standard by some of the major Linux distributions in place of OpenOffice, and already the shipping version has some improvements over the new OO version.

General feeling in the open source community is that LibreOffice will improve at a faster rate in future than OO.

You can download LbreOffice from https://www.libreoffice.org/ at no cost.

Either one of them are a good choice, and work very similarly.

As for the StarOffice variant of OpenOffice, I've never bothered with it. Oracle now provides paid support at various levels for OpenOffice, so I would suspect that StarOffice will go away given that Oracle owns SUN.

ThomasAndrew

I agree the reflective portion on the Redbot 1000 is not useful when the light is on. The reason I like taillights that have them are in case your batteries die on you and ... like me... you've taken off all the reflectors. If you look at sites like this...

https://ec.europa.eu/transport/wcm/ro...r_vehicles.htm

It would appear that ANY white "reflector" for the front and red "reflector" for the rear would pass. I am not aware of any EU standard but rather standards that are country by country. Apparently this is why there are two bolt patterns on rear racks that we get in the US. They are for two different standards.

How is it that you know the Radbot meets an EU standard?

Cyclist0383

It's mentioned on their website.

ThomasAndrew

https://www.bike-eu.com/public/file/a...tandards_en_14
764_english-draft.pdf#search='EN14764

Check Page 76. 4.20.1.

So I don't know what standard they are referring to. I know it has reflective capabilities...just not sure how much.

Cyclist0383

I'll pass, thanks. There really isn't a reason to get into a pedantic discussion about bike reflectors. It's a good light with a decent reflector, and that's good enough for me.

carpetman1

I bought a pair of Wal Mart specials--then I bought a Niterider minewt 350--now there's a real light. Very pleased with it.