How to pick the best Bike Light
There are lots of different styles of bike riders. Gravel, singletrack, bike pack, road, endurance, commuter, downhill, recumbent, and a dozen others. Each type of riding comes with some unique lighting demands so we decided to put together a quick guide for the major types of riding and what lights suit it best.
Road Riding
This one is easy. If you find yourself riding exclusively on the road whether you are a commuter, weekend warrior, or doing overnight endurance events then Detour is going to be the best light for you. The reason for this is the cutoff line. Detour has a StVZO compliant cutoff beam, which means you can aim your light to get the maximum brightness on the road without blinding oncoming traffic.
Nearly every bike light sold in the USA is a circular beam pattern or a wide flood, so one of the very common pieces of advice found on forums and discussions is to aim the light down. This puts the brightest part of the light in front of your tire instead of aiming down the road. Cutoff line optics are like the low beam on your car and are designed to put light on the road without blinding traffic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ggheYxlV4
These cutoff or StVZO lights are very common in Europe since several countries require it by law for any riders using lights on the street. We hope that more riders in the USA will learn about these cutoff line style lights and adopt them on their own bikes.
For endurance riders doing more than 4-5+ hours on the bike at night, run Detour on a medium or low setting on pitch black roads and you will get significantly more runtime. If you need more than that, Detour charges over USB-C while it runs, so a small power bank in a top tube bag keeps you going as long as you can pedal. Add a Blade tail light out back so drivers can judge where you are and how fast you are moving.
Gravel Riding
Who doesn’t love long rides along a riverbank or a train tracks? We have gotten a lot of questions about the best light for gravel riding since it’s a mixture of off-road “trails”, but often sharing the trail with other bikers and pedestrians. Because of this we recommend Detour for gravel riding. Gravel gets pitch dark once you are away from town, so you can often run on a lower setting and still ride comfortably, meaning you can go for days doing a few hour stints at night without worrying about the battery draining. If you want a helmet light for looking through corners or reading a map, Hangover is the light pick, and Blade covers the rear.
Single-track
Now we get into the real off-road stuff. If you are riding twisty single-track trails then the Trail Evo was designed specifically for you. A wide evenly lit beam pattern lets you mount the Trail Evo on the handlebars and move the bike around without losing what you are looking at. This one is a pretty easy recommendation because the Trail Evo was designed around singletrack riding from the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-VNBoKVFFk
Really Fast Single-track
If you attack your trails at night like you are trying to get KOM on Strava then a handlebar and helmet light together is the answer. The Evo Downhill Package pairs the wide illumination of the Trail Evo on the handlebars with the tighter, punchier beam of the Hangover on your helmet, creating a wall of light that is unbroken when you are looking deep into corners or approaching switchbacks. For the most experienced and fastest riders, the Portal Downhill Package swaps in Portal on the helmet for more power and more runtime. Same color temperature on both lights, and the two beams blend together into one pattern once both are on and you start riding hard.
We hear this all the time, but it is literally like riding in daylight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vwl4W171L8
Recumbent Riding
Much like road riding, the lights for a recumbent bike follow a similar guideline. If you are on the road then try Detour. We have had dozens of customers mount it on their recumbent bikes with great success and rave reviews.
As you can see, different riding requires different types of lighting. There is no one-size-fits-all solution (yet!) and in order to get the best light for your bike it’s best to be honest about where and how you ride. If you have any more questions you can always drop us a line by emailing us contact@outboundlighting.com or give us a ring. Always happy to chat lighting and recommend which lights will work best for you.
