Knog Blinder, best light i've bought.

3 hours stay, 50 hours flashing, usb charged. Around $35 online.

+1 on that, .. I don't have a job with a USB chain ..
so having the lights there, wired, & lit, any time I'm moving, is the best.

Second the rechargeable batteries. I'd add to that a suggestion to get low self-discharge NiMH over regular ones and to get a good smart charger. LSD NiMH are sometimes sold as pre-charged NiMH.

Best thing about this setup is the smart charger knows to stop charging without damaging the battery so you can charge before the batteries completely deplete.

It's a good light at a good price for what it is, but still not bright enough to see the road when you're cruising at a 15+ mph average in my experience. Good secondary/city light for sure though, I use mine as a flasher now or for quick jaunts in town.

Not sure why you'd consider the minewt a 'joke'. It's a great light that puts out a bright beam. Many commuters use the light to ride to/from work every day, then sit at a computer with an available USB plug for 8 hours in between rides. It's super simple to plug in the minewt when I get to work & then take it with me when I leave. I take the light off my bike every day, just becuase I don't want to encourage an opportunistic thief, so there's no real disadvantage to having to plug it in. It's a great light, at a good price, especially for anyone that works at a computer all day. Also, it's not a 'supposedly' bright light, it is a bright light. Not sure why you would question it's brightness based on the required frequency of charging. Those are two seperate factors. The point is that you can get a really powerful light that will last for your full commute (if your commute is of average length) & then will be fully charged & ready to go by the time you need it again.

As others have said. It is a great light. I've used it for the past 6+ months. It also is rated at 1.5hrs, so it does not bother me at all that it only last as long as its supposed to. I actually charge my everyday while I am at work. My ride home from work I use the steady beam and the ride in the morning in full day light I use the flashing mode. I get to work, plug it in, and its ready to go for the ride home. I actually usually don't even run it with its brightest setting as the lower settings give me plenty of light.

As for USB re-chargable lights, I recommend the Cygolites Expillion and Hotshot.

MiNewt is a good light with a terrible mount. Worthless, really. The Cygolite Expilion is a good light with a good mount.

What issues do you have with the mount? I have heard others say similar things. I haven't had issues with mine. Though I haven't used a lot of others ones either to know what I am missing.

You might want to consider doing a bit of research on how many charge cycles those batteries will take.

I pretty much assume it's an 18650 inside. The run time and the light output seem about right for an 18650. These should have around 500 cycles with about 20% capacity fade. That's enough for once per work day for about two years.

Sounds like the cygolite rear is a good light but anyone considering it should know that it is not as bright as the dinotte 300R. I couldn't find the output on the cygolite site but assuming you are correct at 100 lumens the 300R has an output reported on the dinotte site to be brighter than the 140R at 120 lumens and not quite as bright as the 400R at 240 lumens.

Not sure where you're comming from regarding the "hassle" of charging a minewt for five hours - I plug mine in and go to bed. Is there something else I should be doing ?

The MiNewt Cordless (and Mako) series lights have a mount that I'm pretty impressed with, and wish that GOPro would emulate for their camera.

As for brightness vs. runtime, I use mine in flash mode for daylight riding (when I'm normally invisible like every other cyclist), and low (walk) for night time riding. I charge my light about 1-2 times a week. I find that I don't need to be pumping out 600 lumens at night, unless I'm really trying to impress someone.

But one can buy 6-7 of them for the price of the dinotte 300R!


I've destroyed quite a few of these one-piece bike lights by removing them constantly. Charging on the bike is inconvenient for me.

FWIW, here's my video of the MagicShine and Cygolite Hotshot taillights

Daylight:
https://youtu.be/w01pMVVGXhk

Night:
https://youtu.be/9wrzgHdWz28

The Cygolite looks kind of weak in that video but it's actually not, it's just that the MagicShine is ridiculously bright, actually brighter than the Dinotte 140R that I used to have.

This is not meant as an insult, but are you sure you have the Cygolite Hotshot on the brightest? I put some reflective tape on my rack last night and was checking it out and was amazed how bright the Hotshot was. It would completely overpower the light of the reflectors at its peak brightness. I have mine on the slow strobe setting set to max brightness.

Light & Motion makes some really nice rechargeable lights. I have a Stella 600 mounted on my bars (it's not a USB light however), and then a VIS 360 on my helmet which for commuting is maybe the most useful of my lights. I like having a light on my helmet that I can point where I want to see, or point it in a direction to "be seen". The tail light is quite brite as well and is up high so as to be more visible than something mounted on the seatpost.

Yes, exactly. I use the MiNewt on my helmet (great helmet mount), the Cygolite Expilion on my bars, and a B&M generator light above front tire mounted at the fork crown.

Are you removing them this way? I remove one or more daily & never have any issues.

The manual that came with it did not indicate that brightness was settable, only flash speed. I thought this was odd too since I thought I'd seen that it was settable, but they never mention changing the brightness, only the speed, either on the packaging or in the manual. I'll go get it off my helmet and see.

Just played with it. As far as I can tell, brightness is only settable in steady mode. I turned it down all the way in steady mode, when I went to blinking mode it was back to full brightness, when I got back to steady mode it was extremely dim again. I turned it back to all the way bright on steady mode, the blinking modes seem unchanged.

If there's a way to change brightness in blinking modes, I can't find it. So I think that yes, I am in full brightness mode in that video.

EDIT: Hmm there's some indication online that changing the brightness in steady mode alters some component of some of the flash modes. I just played with it some more though and I can't see it. Even with the brightness down to very very dim on steady mode, all the blinking modes still look just as bright to me.

I think we are both right. Looks like it only changes the brightness on the solid mode, otherwise just the speed. My mistake. I did just about blind myself testing it though!

It's been half an hour and I still can't see very well myself.

Just got my Cygolite 350 today, $73 with free shipping from Amazon -- I'll have a write up soon if anyone is interested.

What kind of run time do you get with that? My first charge lasted about 45 minutes, but I'm way past that on the second.

Its rated for 350 charge cycles and I just got this e-mail back from NiteRider. Looks like its pretty easy and cheap to swap out the battery when it comes time.