A good tail light for daytime use?
 

Apart from my jerseys i'm rolling in predominantly black, so i'm looking to further reduce some risk on the road and so motorists can see me well ahead. Does anyone have or know of a tail light that is well visible during the day? How many lumens is required for a car to see you? I'm currently looking at these:

Knog Blinder R, 70 lumens, looks streamlined, good features. Knog - Blinder Road R Bike Light

Lezyne Micro Drive Rear, adjustable, looks...weird Lezyne - Engineered Design - Products - LED Lights - Micro Drive (Rear)

Also found the Dinotte Quad Red @ 200 lumens (necessary?) but at $243 she's a bit steep.

Cheers

LED + Dynohub power , the same wired taillight (German B&M) goes on as soon as the front wheel turns..

lots of prior touts of mounting a bunch of blinking battery lights at the same time .. its your choice.
read back thru past posts ,here and commuting section.

have someone ride your bike and You follow it in a car to see if you are satisfied with its brilliance.


For really Bright, you could put a red lens over a headlight and point it backwards , too.

Here are some full daylight tests of some lights on the Fly6 test that I posted a while back.

https://youtu.be/CSo39h_xzFc?t=6m22s

The FIRST light that I think is visible at all in the daylight is the 60 lumen one. Anything less than that (I think probably anything with a Dynohub is probably not putting out 60 lumens to the taillight?) are NOT daylight visible.

Even 60 is marginal IMO.

It's a lot of money, but so is getting hit. At this point having experienced the DS500, if I lost it, I'd immediately buy another.

Dinotte taillights are very visible in daylight. Expensive but you need something that bright to show up in daylight.

Actually I'd probably want to take a look at the Dinotte quad 4 taillight. The DS500 is awesome but the separate battery pack is a bit of a PITA, if the Dinotte is similar in output it might be easier to deal with in general.

I'm rockin' the Dinotte Quad 4 Red - stead on after dark, flashing during the day. I'm very pleased with it; if I lost it today, I'd have another on order tomorrow. Not cheap, but IMO worth it for the increased visibility (I know, it doesn't guarantee I won't get hit, but I believe it decreases the odds of getting hit).

Design Shine 500

The Dinotte may be expensive, but they're well built little devices.

For what you pay for either of these lights, a separate battery pack is good. If the battery goes bad, it much cheaper to replace if it's separate.

I think all you accomplished from that review (tongue in cheek, for me only) is that I need a better light than my cygolight hotshot2. :lol: I've always thought it was bright, but the visibility drops off dramatically off-axis. It looked positively dim in your setup.


Your lighting changes noticeably in the middle - the sky appears over cast for that one you said is the first one that was daylight visible.

Screw it, here comes my dinotte quad red.

The Bontrager Flare R is especially designed for daytime use, is good 'n' bright, USB rechargeable, compact, and not too expensive. I also really like the Light & Motion Vis 180.

Brilliant cheers

Yeah, that DS500 stands out the best. Thanks for this.

Call me decadent, but I'd rather have convenience. The separate battery pack is something that you have to screw with every day. The battery going bad is a minor inconvenience maybe once every few years. It's not a GUARANTEE that it's cheaper to replace - a good 7.4v external pack is $50 to $75. I don't know that Dinotte would charge more than that to replace the internal pack if it went bad.

Also if their sales pitch is accurate, it's less likely to go bad - they say they're using mil spec cells and are intentionally underutilizing them to maximize cell life.

Unfortunately, I don't think Dinotte makes their brightest "day light only" tail light with a built in battery. I could be wrong.

The Dinotte Quad RED Taillight has a built-in battery. The brighter Daytime Red Taillight does indeed have an external battery.

Depending on my riding, I might still go with the Quad Red. At $189 the MSRP is $70 less, it has an internal battery which I prefer, and it's not Day Time only. I think the older Dinotte 300R is a good day time light and IIRC the Quad Red is brighter than the 300R. But if you want the max for day time, you'd look for something like the Dinotte Daytime or the DesignShine.

Flare R. Obvious at 1/2 mile in bright sunlight. Though there are brighter, this is bright enough for me.

Dinotte in Bright Sun Light.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...dlights039.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...dlights020.jpg

Yeah, I noticed the change in ambient light in the video as well. Regardless, something I learned a while back; videos used to illustrate the intensity of flashing lamps ALWAYS fail to represent what the human eye will see in real life. I learned that a while back when doing my own video tests.

Anyway, if you really want something that is DAYTIME visible I think you need to start at the 100 lumen output. After that more is always going to be better. If money were no object I'd certainly recommend the DiNotte products.

I'm a cheap scape so I use one of the Xeccon Geinea Micro Rear lights. Can't beat the price for something this powerful. Not to mention you save more by just buying the lamp and use the 8.4 volt battery of your choice. The downside is the lamp comes with a lot of wire and a remote switch. I wrap the excess wire around my seat post and mount the switch where the top and seat tube meet. I guess if I wanted to I could cut off some of the excess wire and splice it back together but I've just used mine as it is. I have had some problems with it but for the most part it works and it is freakingly bright. Xeccon claims 160 lumen. I don't know if that's true but I do think they are over-driving the emitter for maximum effect. ( **Note; I was given the Geinea rear for review free of cost. This was over a year ago. I still use the light. )

Another Daytime solution I use is a drop-in torch using a custom ( nailbender ) XP-G amber emitter ( P60 drop-in ), over-driven with a nice multi-flash UI. I'm not sure how bright it actually is but it has to be over 120 lumen. It is VERY daytime visible. I have this mounted to one of my seat rails facing to the rear. The Geinea I reserve for use at night on roads with higher speed limits but that's only because it has no low power mode. I use the Performance Axiom rear for normal road use at night. The Axiom is so bright I rarely use the Geinea anymore although the Geinea is by far my brightest rear lamp.

Last but not least there is another cheaper option. You can use a "white led flasher" pointed to the rear. I know this is unconventional but I've seen people do this and I have to admit, "It works"..

I use the Lezyne Zecto rear light. Flashing during the day, solid at night. I like the fact that I can take it on/off quickly.
Lezyne - Engineered Design - Products - LED Lights - Zecto Drive (Rear)

That looks nice. Low power but nice. At 20 lumen it's not going to garner a lot of attention during the day but at night it shouldn't be half bad. Xeccon also sent me one of their little "self contained" mini rear lamps ( Geinea III ) for review. Not real bright but certainly enough to be well seen at night. They don't say how bright it is but 20-30 lumen is about right. Of course I have brighter lamps so I've never really used the ones with small outputs.

Lumens alone, of course, won't determine visibility or conspicuousness. Lumens is total visible light output and how that light is directed or focused has an equal if not greater effect. All high visibility taillights employ optics to direct light rearward in cones of various angular extent and with varying light distribution within those cones. The narrower the cone, the brighter the light will appear, and the observer needs need to be at the peak intensity within that cone for it to be the most conspicuous. These lights need to be aimed for best effect, and trade off off-axis conspicuity for on axis conspicuity.

I've been complimented by other riders& drivers; and asked by random riders what model it is: Knog Blinder. I use it day and night on my road bikes.

I also you a Planet Bike Superflash Turbo (commuter bikes).

I don't know where you're shopping, but the Quad Red is US $189 straight from Dinotte.

Well yes, but assuming ( optically speaking ) all things being relatively equal; The more lumen output the more noticeable the lamp will be ( up to a certain point ). This is particularly true when talking about typical rear lamps in the 20-200 lumen range.

Many people have poo-poo'd the original Cygolite Hotshot because of it's narrow beam pattern saying that when off-axis the lamp is not as intense....Well, yeah true, but that doesn't mean that when you leave the brightest area of intense light that suddenly the lamp becomes barely visible. Since I use a Hotshot on the back of my helmet ( very useful because of it's size/weight, UI and good clip ) I tested the off-axis visibility and found it still very visible at 200 ft ( at night ) even when 45° off-axis. Not nearly as bright as on-axis of course but still brighter than a lot of the super cheap ( low power ) LED blinkies I see some people using as their main rear lamp...

And speaking of cheap low powered rear lamps; I'm still amazed how many people still use rear lamps with "barely noticeable" rear output. Usually when I see these people when driving I see "them" before seeing their lamp. Sometimes it makes me wonder; Do they go to the store and look for the lamp with the most pitiful output? Sometimes I wonder where they find these lamps that completely suck. :rolleyes:

Eventually I might find something better ( optically speaking ) for the helmet but for now the Hotshot with it's small size/weight and relatively bright output keeps it's place on back of my helmet. Personally the only reason I use the Hotshot on the helmet is to provide a "second" light source when being viewed from the rear. The Performance Axiom ( rear ) is my "work horse" light sitting on the seat post. Used together at night they would be very hard to "not see".

I've been using a Dinotte 300R for the past 2 1/2 years and have over 20k miles on it. Other than the size I can find no fault with this daytime visible rear light. For daytime visibility I personally wouldn't bother with anything under 100 lumens but that's just me. I do think we're getting closer to a good, bright rear light that is priced under $100 but I don't think we're there yet.

I can't remember where I saw this Orfos Flare 360 but it looks promising as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Orfos-Flare-De...lare+taillight

I rode with a guy for a couple days at the beginning of June and it took 2 days to realize he had a red blinky mounted right at the back of his helmet. Nearly impossible to see! I do have a helmet mounted light I use in the winter when I ride a lot after dark - I think the more the merrier, and the higher the better, when it comes to night visibility. I'll have to try your cygolite trick - it's directional, but if you're moving your head around a lot you should be able to spread a lot of red light all over.


I just got my QuadRed in the mail today... it came with about 45 different mounting options. :twitchy: They could probably knock $40 off the price if they pruned that down a bit. Ha ha. And yes, I did it... I blinded myself. It's quite a bit heavier than my cygolite hotshot although not that much larger, and it looks like the run time is a lot lower but for the purpose I purchased it - daylight (really, sunset) visibility, it looks like it will do really well.

The Specialized Flux Expert Tail Light:
Specialized Bicycle Components

- 110 lumen output
- Visible up to 0.6mile / 1.0 kilometer even during midday in the Summer
- Ambient light sensor boosts light output by 50% in Flash Mode during daytime running for increased visibility

One problem I had with an older Dinotte tail light was that it was good for daylight but bad for night riding with other riders, even it's lowest setting was to bright. A rear light with an ambient light sensor that auto adjusts sounds useful for not having to own multiple rear lights for different lighting.

I alternate between the obnoxious strobe-like mode and the steady pulse mode depending on how bright the ambient lighting is. I actually feel bad for cars behind me if I'm in the shade or it's overcast out with the really obnoxious mode on. To be honest though, I saw another rider with a 300r on the strobe mode at night and it wasn't nearly as annoying as I thought it would be from a distance. I usually get 6-8 hours of run time between charges.

I've got mine mounted to an aero seat post using a custom 3D printed mount.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-W...2015-06-09.jpg

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=461882

Here is my taillight. It's an Exposure Blaze. Not cheap, but incredibly bright. I believe the stated Lumens is 80, but it seems brighter than that. It is actually painful if you glance at the light at close range. The design is awesome. The entire body is aluminum.

The only bad part about this light is the mounting bracket that comes with it. It is a plastic semi circle that snaps around the light, and a silicone band that stretches around the seat post.

I wasn't happy with the possibility of the mount breaking while on a ride, and losing the light. So I designed a machined aluminum mount that you can see in the picture. It's a simple design, but provides a secure mount that can not break and holds the light firmly in place.

I thought about having several produced, as the price goes down with the more that are made. But for I know I just have two prototypes, one of them being the one I currently use.