Because for those of us living in urban areas, being seen is the only reason we need the lights. Street lights are plenty for me to see the road.

I've also got a Princeton Tec Switchback 3 for when I ride trails or in the suburbs at night, but there's no sense in lugging around a $200 light when you don't need it.

U mad bro?

I only paid $27.69 for mine... I made the move only for convenience, not styling (it's quite obvious as I chose black instead of the other obnoxious "hip" colors they offer), on and off considering I leave my commuter bike (where it's primarily used) is often times parked outside. Nevertheless I also sport a garmin edge 800 on my roadie.

Not angry at all, just think they, and a few other products not made by Knog, are a waste of money.

$85 dollar light? Are you kidding? I have the Cygolite MityCross 480...that means 480 lumens, and the light cost $220 on sale. Then add to that an old VistaLite Xenon amber front flasher I paid $18, a BLT 5 LED helmet light I paid $30, a Soma Road Flare bar end lights for $18, the Blackburn Mars 4 rear light for $32 and a Cateye LD600 I jerry rigged onto the rear of my helmet for $20. So yes I guess I spent more then $84...of course I spent that over the course of 20 years...the VistaLite is about 20 years old. But I ride in the dark with as much confidence as I do during the day.

And there are people on this forum that have spent a lot more money then what I spent for the headlight on their headlights. There were a few that spent $500 an up to $1,200! That to me is an overkill. My 480 lumen light is more then bright enough for any road cyclist. And the reason for the front flasher is because bicycle headlights are far smaller then motorists expect, so the flasher attracts their attention in my direction. The helmet headlight is so I can aim the light in their eyes, or down to see the computer or the road close to the wheel or the side of the road etc.

A $20 front light is useless unless your riding in well lit city streets and going slow. You can't take a $20 light ride on a pitch dark road at 20mph and feel safe...your over riding your light at 5 mph in those conditions not alone 20. There's a reason cars and motorcycles have bright lights because they travel at high speeds and the higher speed you ride the more your lighting you have becomes dangerously useless.

I do not rely on reflectors at all, there almost useless anyways. I do wear reflective leg bands and reflective clothing that was built into the jacket, but none of my jerseys have any reflective banding, but my shoes have a reflective rear tag. But that's it, no front or rear or wheel reflectors that the factory is required to have on a bike when they sell the bike new.

Hate to be the guy who points out menial grammar mistakes, but you said "and" when you should have said "or". What you said implied that one cannot ride fast even on well lit city streets without hundreds of dollars worth of high quality lighting. That is obviously false.

"A $20 front light is useless unless you're riding in well lit city streets or going slow."

With a $20 front flasher you can ride as fast as you want in city streets, and be just as safe as if you had a $220 headlamp. You've demonstrated that yourself with the VistaLite Xenon... <$20, and it attracts attention, which is 100% of the job of a bicycle light on city streets.

The main thing Knog bikecessories have going for them is their ease of installation/removal. For that reason alone I am considering a Knog computer even though the functionality is limited.

As far as lights, my $55 Fenix LD20 plus a $2 generic velcro mount has done me well. Battery life sucks, but that's what rechargeables are for.

Are you volunteering to be my grammar corrector then?

When I was in third grade, my teacher asked me a question of which I can no longer remember, but I replied using the word "ain't", she was mortified and asked where my grammar was, I told her my grammar was in the kitchen baking cookies!

Actually when I said "and" I meant and! If your riding on well lit city streets AND going slow...but I also meant or, so I should have said if your riding in well lit city streets and/or going slow.

flashing front light attracts attention regardless if on a city street or in the country, the car will see that first only because bicycle head lights are small and they can misjudge how far away you are. But you can't see the road with a just a flashing front light, you need both, or should have both, the need to have is up to the rider. Not all city streets are well lit, you also travel from one well lit area to a non well lit area and your eyes are not accustom to the dark areas very well, so with a light you can see with those dark areas are now lit.

Look man it's up to you if you want to see the road better, most people in my city of !80,000 people don't use any lights flashing or not at night, and a lot of those people don't even have reflectors! And they can see to ride...sort of, but we can't see them well at all.

hate to bust your balls but for $20 shipped I got this awesome headlamp/320733095545?pt=AU_Sport_Camping_Hiking_Lamps_Torches&hash=item4aad2ea679[/url]. 300 lumens, 2 rechargeable batteries with a 6 hour life each and the charger. I can see brilliantly at 27mph in pitch black areas with no moon out.

And a big sell about the knog computer was yes it's easy removal for when locking up in sketch places, and the fact I could mount it on my stem instead of my bars.

Your not busting my balls. I bought the Cygolite because I trust the brand, I don't know that brand you bought and wouldn't trust it especially for $20! I bought a MagicShine headlight before I got the ExpiliOn because all the forum people were raving about it's brightness with around 900 lumens. First problem with it was that it never was as bright as 800 lumens, my guess was that it was closer to 500, then about 6 months after I bought it the light failed, I sent it back to GeoMan and after several dozen e-mails and reporting the incident to the BBB I never got a response or the unit back. That's the last time I will buy a cheap product from an unknown source. Good luck with yours. Of course if yours goes bad your only out $20, I was out $85; but the same type of deal as yours-where could I find a 900 lumen light for $85? I couldn't, so I took the bait and got fillet.

I bought the one mentioned by Stryper and have had it for a month or so now. Good to hear you got it Nikko!!! Fantastic light! Blows away everything i've seen/ridden with. For $20 it really cant be beat. I can go through the park at night at 20-23 mph when its pitch black and see everything. Both batteries last a long time on the high beam setting,and the headlamp is very comfortable. The charger will charge the batteries quickly and there is an extra battery so you can be ready to go if you burn through the first one. Its also completely waterproof. The adjustable zoom is great for using it concentrated or flooding it out. I really enjoy it and am going to buy another for my wife.

Knog really sucks. The NERD is ok I gues, no problems yet, but the 4 Led rear light and the 1 led front light I use just suck. Keep losing contact and stop working, or battery drains. One of the two. So no matter what I do, they never work (except for the first week maybe). That was my second and last knog purchase. I expect the NERD to stop working in about a week or so. I'll report back if I am wrong.

This looks pretty sweet. Do you wear it on your head, or did you figure out a way to slap it on the bike?

o to Amazon and they have a bunch of those lights including this one that comes with a bike mount, plus it comes with a tail light, and this one is cheaper: https://cgi.ebay.com/5w-LED-Bicycle-F...ht_6400wt_1136

CAUTION, these lights use 3 AAA batteries, look at the specs, 3 AAA bats won't last more then an hour on high, I have probably 1.5 watts in the Mars 4 running off of 2 AAA bats and it last about 13 hours on steady, and if you rechargeables you get even less run time.

Also some of those lights are only offered on E-Bay, just click on the pics and some will go to an e-bay site. Look at the going prices for this stuff, one light is a 1600 Lumen light with 1 minute left on the bidding and it's up to $24, another light is a 8 lumen light with 1 minute left and the bidding is up to 89 cents!!! Do people on e-bay know something we don't? I think they know their bad lights, and or the company won't stand behind their product like GeoMan and probably worse! that's why the bidding is so low. Here's one that's up to 95 cents with just 2 minutes left when I clicked on: https://cgi.ebay.com/5W-Bright-LED-Fl...ht_2103wt_1118

^ that's why I didn't buy one that uses stanard AA or AAA batteries. The ones I linked used some large rechargeable battery with at least 3 hours life on high and it comes with two batteries so if your night ride is real long you can just swap them when the first one burns out,

And who cares if the company stands behind the light. It cost less than $20. We tested the head lamp in the pool and it was completely waterproof. It's been holding up fine for the last month or two.

And to answer jaytron, I wear it on my head. Prefer a head lamp personally. The light shines wherever I want to see, how convenient. Plus I use my entire bar for hold positions so I don't have anywhere I could mount a light.

For the record, I would never strap an off-brand, high power chinese knock-off lamp to my head.

It's one thing to have your MagicShine battery pack burst in the flames (which happened, and necessitated a recall by GeomanGear), because that's strapped to your frame. A head lamp... seems risky.

If nothing else, I bet it keeps you warm in the winter.

But that's just me, and what do I know.

Ah ok. I'm not sure I could fit it under my helmet... haha

I'm sure with a few zip ties I could figure out how to mount it to my handlebars.

I heard this before from others that their great Chinese make light went poof into flames, fortunately mine just died, but they wouldn't replace or fix or return mine.

Did your fire cause any damage? I bet Geoman didn't pay for that either.

Lets go and buy the cheapest Chinese high power light we can find because we all like a little excitement in our lives, like a fire, maybe even melting carbon handlebars or frames, or just scorching your $3,000 bike's paint job, no big deal, heck that $3,000 carbon bike was probably made in China anyways so let it burn.

For one it's the most commonly used bulb in high powered LEDs, a CREE 5w. For two the seller has 1159 feedbacks left and only 8 have been negative. That's a pretty damn good turn around.
You can live your life in fear of anything that isn't name brand and enjoy paying 5x the price for everything you use, but personally I'm going to trust people (I know stupid decision) and have a pocket full of dollar bills and daisies. And if a few things do break here and there, I can replace them since I spent so little in the first place.

Heck I remember only 3-4 years ago when Leader wasn't name brand either. Everybody was worry about this, heard that, nay say nay say. Now they are the most repped bike frame on the forum behind the kilo. Same with H+son when they first came out and everyone saw the taco rim. It worried me since I ordered the rims first thing when they came out and they were shipping when that pic surfaced, but low and behold not a single other defect has been brought to light in any of their rims.

So let's ponder this further. Chinese are the worlds leaders at pirating software, spam, malware, and viruses, they probably wouldn't know how to make their positive response ratio high though right? Wait, that's just the fear in me speaking out.

And lets compare a USA manufacture called Leader to a Chinese manufacture who are constantly changing their names due to bad workmanship and fraud business practices. Good comparison.

H+Son rims are not tacoing just splitting apart, but that bad rap came as a result of a skidding contest popular in Japan where they will skid well over 200 meters; and some of the champ skidders use nitrogen gas to fill the tires with, the tire exploded first, which is common in these contest, then the rim failed which may have been caused by excessive heat in one area. At least that's what I recall hearing about that particular rim failure.

The failures have nothing to do with the LED "bulb".

They fail because of poor regulator choice/design, inadequate head sinking, and poor thermal protection on the battery packs. These are all things that tend to happen with cut-rate engineering, and in combination can pretty easily result in damaging the battery packs, and fire.

I never said don't use cheap Chinese stuff. I still use my MagicShine. I use DealExtreme blinky lights.

All I said is I wouldn't strap a bargain basement Chinese battery pack to my head, and then try to pull a few watts out of it.