Knog Blinder 900 Front Light
As we are well into winter everyone is asking me about lights, however, I think you should be riding with front and rear lights all year round, no matter what time of day or night, terrain, country or city, bike paths or roads.
We are also facing, in Australia at least, distracted driving that is reaching all-time highs. No matter the number of cameras installed to catch people, police looking for people and massive fines and the risk of loss of licence, it seems that people can't under any circumstances endure the horror of driving from A to B without taps of their phone, responding to messages, calling someone or playing some brain draining game.
The other day I even saw someone driving through Melbourne holding their phone above the steering wheel in both hands, wrists on the wheel, singing (I think they were singing... they could have been talking enthusiastically or watching YouTube) while wearing massive over ear headphones and chewing on something. If that's not distracted driving, I don't know what is.
So, if you can get a bright flash of light in the direction of anyone that has not seen you, or is hopelessly distracted, it could make a significant difference to your day.
That brings us to the question of which bike light. There's a lot to choose from, and over the time that I have been riding bikes the evolution of bike lights has been huge, especially in the last 5 years.
There were the days of AAA's powered lights producing just enough power to let you see a slight glow on your front wheel that were hopelessly inadequate. We then moved to much brighter lights with external batteries that involved routing what seemed like hundreds of KM of cable around your bike and provided a bright light, with the downside that you’d likely have an accident after getting tangled in wires… plus the battery pack lasted approximately 3.5 minutes before overheating and exploding. We then moved back to all-in-one solutions with high powered batteries that got so hot you could keep your coffee warm for a couple of hours by balancing it on top of them after getting home.
I've used frightening expensive lights, some of which were fantastic, but used proprietary chargers, or were large and heavy. I have tried other expensive lights from overseas, full of German engineering and came with absurdly long instruction manuals that gave up on life after a season of use. Next came the head/helmet torch period that essentially involved a crown of lights that would blind any person that came within 50km of you and would likely embed in your skull if you had a fall and provided the ongoing threat of having a small nuclear reactor battery attached to the back of your head or in your jersey pocket.
Good times.
And all of this faff is what keeps me coming back to Knog. I've owned and tested multiple iterations of Knog’s lights over the years. There's something entirely unique about anything that Knog produces. It’s a design aesthetic that is common to everything that emerges from their drawing board, and in my experience results in products that manage to connect the form and function of any given product in only a way that industrial design can.
I like them for three main reasons. Simplicity leading to usability. Performance beyond their price point. Design aesthetic that looks great on the bike.
It sounds simple, but I don’t think anyone is doing it quite as well. Now, before you label me a Knog fanboy, I am willing to concede that I have had Knog lights give up after a couple of years, I have had the odd bracket fail, but in all cases Knog were happy to exchange the lights for a replacement. Plus, I have had lights costing 10 times more than those offered by Knog die on me after 6 months, and I’ve never returned them due to PhD level return complexity.
This swings me nicely onto the latest Knog Blinder 900. Here are the highlights - I like the look, the form, the build quality, the way the light looks on the bike. The way I can attach and detach it in a second and that they are at the smaller end of scale yet pump out a solid level of light with multiple setting options all controlled via one button and that is charged by USB-C.
KNOG BLINDER 900
I've owned 10+ Knog lights over my years of riding and I have liked them all. But as soon as I took the 900 out of its box (which is plastic free, great work Knog) I could tell that it was an instant step up from anything I had seen from their lights before.
The full aluminium body is sleek and feels a step up in quality. There is a simple on/off switch that doubles as a mode change button that cycles through six modes and a well-sealed USB-C charge point. There's no charge cable supplied, but I really don't need another USB-C cable to add to my mountain of cables and chargers so I can live with that.
Light modes range through the following:
High – 900 Lumens – 2hr
Medium – 450 Lumens – 4hr
Low – 200 Lumens – 8hr
Pulse – 450 Lumens – 8hr
Strobe – 200 Lumens – 16hr
Eco – 130 Lumens – 120hr
There are small cut outs to each side of the light to provide side visibility to give you a little more presence and a battery power indicator light around the edge of the on off button, so you know when it’s time to plug in the 5000mAh built in battery.
Finally, the light is rated to IP67 for waterproofness, meaning that there’s complete protection against dust and small objects and can survive short periods of total immersion in water to a depth of 1m. It’s genuinely ‘waterproof’ rather than ‘water-resistant’.
Mounting
The Blinder 900 comes equipped with two mounting options. One GoPro style under mount and a sound handlebar mount that with rubberised strap that can accommodate bars from 22mm to 34mm. There's no hinged ratchet on the 900 that I have had on previous Knog light mounts. These have been a failure point at times for me, so the simple strap and hook style on the 900 should be robust. The light snaps in and out of the mount with a medium level of force so you can always leave the mount on your bike and just take the light with you if you’re parking up in a public place or for charging.
I’ve taken the light across some pretty horror Macedon Ranges roads, that will leave you feeling like you been shaken to pieces, plus along sum serious corrugations on dirt roads on the gravel bike and the light did not shift in the mount. Only time will tell if the mount remains as secure over multiple attachments.
Performance
Surely this is why we are all here. As the name suggests Blinder 900 will blind you 900 times a second... of course not, there's 900 lumens of brightness pushed out of the four LEDs on the front of the sleek body. Two of the optics are narrow and two are wide, offering a nice mix of wide road illumination 20-30m in front of the bike while still pushing out a more focused central beam up the road for visibility to others.
I’ll take a second of your time here to talk about lumens, and hopefully give you some relative measures. A lumen is a measure of brightness (if you want the convoluted scientific explanation around candela intensity, please be my guest and Google it), so more lumens equal more brightness. A bog-standard low beam car headlight is in the 700-1000 lumens range to give you an idea of where things are at.
My rule of thumb is 400 lumens with a pulse/flash option where you’re riding in areas with streetlights is ample, as it’s more about being seen rather than seeing where you are going as there is enough light from the surrounds. Going much brighter than this will likely blind other road users.
Once you’re out of streetlight range 600 lumens is the minimum I want to be riding with. My local roads can be so dark that you can hardly see your hand in front of your face, plus there are a liberal spread of potholes, cracks, rubbish and branches on the road that you need to see from a long way back. In this environment I am really wanting that full 900 lumens.
So as far as the Blinder 900 goes, my pick for riding has been the Medium (450 lumens), Pulse or Strobe for urban areas and being out on long climbs in the dark where I am travelling slower. Having an actively changing light i.e. a ‘flash’ setting is really useful in urban environments to actually catch people’s attention rather than use the light to see where you are going.
On faster dark sections I’ll punch it up to the 900/high setting to give me extra vision. I would say that it’s just enough in these circumstances, and you need to be aware you’ve got 2 hours of time at this setting, which his fine given I’ll rarely ride in the dark for more than an hour before the sun comes up.
Overall
There’s a lot to like about the Blinder 900 front light. It’s a big step forward from Knog in build quality, mounting and the introduction of USB-C charging is great and at $129.95 offers excellent value for money.
It’s worth noting that this light comes in a 600 Lumen ($99.95) and 1300 Lumen ($169.95) variation, however I think the 900 is the absolute sweet spot for performance and price. The only reason I would go up to the 1300 is if you are doing large amounts of country/pitch black riding and you want a little extra light.
In the 8 weeks I’ve had the Blinder 900 it has become my go to light. It has even made its way into my trail running pack as a super effective lightweight torch should I need it when I’m out and about and that’s something that I have never done with a bike like before.
So if you’re after a well built, functional light that looks great on the bike, puts out enough light for most situations and will grab the attention of our headphone wearing, mobile watching friend that also happens to be driving a car, head over to Knog’s website where you can find out more about the Knog Blinder 900.
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Full disclosure, Knog sent me this light for review at no cost.
