My favourite bike light ever (so far)
I’ve been testing this bike light over the last few months of 2020 and I have to say: this is my favourite bike light ever so far! No, I wasn’t paid to say that… but Victagen did send this out to me to review, so there’s that.
Watch my extensive bike light video review
If you’d like to watch my video review along with reading this post, check it out here! 👇
What’s in the box?
Okay, on with it! I’ll break this down into a few parts… but first, we’ll start with the unboxing! It comes in a cardboard box and inside those, are the following:
- main front bright light
- handlebar mount
- charge cable
- red backlight
Front light overview
Here’s what we’re all here for: this is the main light. It’s hefty duty, has a quick connect adapter at the bottom and two lighting systems built-in at the front.
At the bottom, are the two main REALLY bright LEDs with a bunch of different modes that we’ll get into shortly. At the top is the floodlight which is a weaker, less directional light that also has a few different modes and we’ll get into that as well.
Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve had this for quite a few months now (3 as of the video review) and you can tell because there are a few scuffs here and there. Now you know what you can expect after riding with is for a while – although these scuffs on the paint were actually caused by me riding around during the daylight with it in my pannier.
Back light overview
On to the backlight!
Initially, I didn’t really use the backlight all that much because I thought it was one of those cheap bike lights. I was wrong; it’s well constructed, very robust, and useful! For example, my partner didn’t have a back bike light on a ride, whipped out this light, slung it right around the seat post and we were good to ride! There are three modes on the back which are:
- constant one
- fast flashy one
- slower flashy one
And they’re just the typical flat disposable batteries that you would find at the dollar store or something. Specifically, the CR2032 batteries.
Lighting modes
Now let’s check out the lighting modes on each of the two lights.
Front bike light overview
You can control the main brightness light from the frontmost button and you’ll have five modes to choose from. There are three constant light modes:
- with one click, you get the brightest mode.
- Two clicks and you get medium mode, and
- three clicks, you get the dimmest solid mode.
The other two modes are two takes on strobe modes. If you long-press the first button, you get the mode that I use 90 percent of my time on my bike, which is actually the SOS pattern mode. On to the final mode: if you double click, you will get the craziest mode there is. Three, two, one… seizure time. Rapid on-offs definitely make you seen but might also cause car crashes and annoyance for everyone within eyesight.
Flood bike light overview
On to the second light! This is the floodlight, which is controlled by the back button. I honestly don’t use it all that often but it is nice to have for when you don’t need something as powerful as the main light. This button also has five clicks to do five actions. If you click once, it actually doesn’t do anything but turn on the display to check your battery’s charge percentage – which I use regularly. This is super handy to have.
Two clicks and you’ll get the brightest floodlight modes there is! Three clicks gets you a medium-to-low light mode. Four clicks gets you a solid red light. And five clicks gets you a pulsing red light mode. It’s less of a strobe and more light a heartbeat. Both lights are on separate circuits from what I can tell which is super handy because there’s also a nice user-friendly feature built into the light’s timing system which makes it so that if you’ve clicked through to the mode that you want, if you wait about a minute or so, the next time you click that button, you probably want the light to turn off… so it takes that into account and doesn’t change to the next mode, it just turns it off for you.
Overall thoughts of both bike lights
My overall thoughts on these light modes are that they’re awesome!
There are some modes that are weird – like the red lighting on the front light which is kinda useless when you have this mounted as a front light. But at least those modes are hidden down way on number 4 and 5 button clicks… and if you need a backlight in a pinch, you have an emergency one on hand. On the other side of things, the main light’s functions are amazingly laid out because I can get to everything I need easily with one or two button presses. And having everything within one or two button presses removes friction from using the actual light as a light (instead of leaving it behind on rides).
Mounting the bike light to handlebars
Now onto the mount.
When I agreed to do this light review, I honestly wasn’t expecting much more than previous lights had offered… meaning, the mount was just gonna be a plastic “good nuff” mount. So when I did the initial unboxing and saw that there was a rubber shim, I was pleasantly surprised!
This, combined with the easy twist-on screw makes this the easiest light to mount that I’ve ever used! You can even have non-uniform handlebars and this will still mount properly. Plus it doesn’t move around because the rubber grips to the handlebars.
A feature that I accidentally ran into is the icing on the cake: it’s a swivel mount! On previous lights that I’ve used, the mount when on one way: straight. So, in the cases where your light wasn’t mounted directly straight, or your handlebars didn’t allow for that, you’d be stuck with a light beam that wasn’t centred!
Battery life
The final bit that I’m going to be covering is the battery. Honestly, I know that batteries are initially wonderful and have a very long lifespan but eventually, they get worse. But, even after three months of consistent and constant use, I’ve seen no reduction in the battery life so far… which does make sense because I believe this runs on two massive 18650 cells. That means there are somewhere between 4600 and 7200 mAh of power inside this light. And those types of cells are rated for about 300 full charge cycles or so until they start to see degradation at all. And many more cycles if you only charge between 20-80% capacity.
A quick side note and a feature is the ability to use this light as a power bank in a pinch; like if your phone runs out of power and you need to call for help, as long as you have a USB cable in your bag, you can plug it right into the backside of your Victagen bike light and get a trickle charge so you can make that call that you really need. As for actual battery life, I’d say you get about 3 hours at full blast… but if you’re using the blinky modes, then you’ll get about double that because your light’s only on for half the time!
This bike light: a BUY!
There you have it: a pretty solid light for about $30. So, if you’re interested in getting this bike light, I don’t have a promo code for you – sorry about that – but, I do have affiliate links! Here they are, just for you! 👇
Buy this Victagen light using these links:
USA Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3tn0YbF
Canadian Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2R5KnLB
If you’re going to buy these lights for yourself – there’s no extra cost for you by using these links. Doing so helps me out by getting a kickback from Victagen. A “finders fee”, if you will!
Ways to support me
Now if you don’t want to get this or spend any money at all, that’s totally fine! You can support me with a few free things as well… those being on my YouTube channel! Go ahead and make sure you Like, Subscribe, and Hit the bell notification icon! All that really helps the YouTube algorithm!
I’d also love to know your thoughts and what you want me to cover in the future! So don’t forget to leave comments here on this blog post or on the associated video! Maybe any bike tips that you really can’t live without or any bike tech that you really can’t live without on the daily? Let me know!
I hope you learned something and I hope to see you reading my next post or watching my next video, bye! 🙂
