Cycling after dark or in low light conditions is especially dangerous. Not only is one’s visibility compromised, one is rendered less visible to oncoming traffic, too.
This is why a quality bike light set is very important and is an essential piece of kit to any biker who intends to go biking in such low light conditions. Some bike light sets are great during the day time, too.
Indeed, a bike with daytime running lights will be more visible to oncoming traffic against a bright backdrop, so it goes without saying that bike safety light sets can be used for both bright and low light conditions.
Since we’ve heard good things about Protocol’s bike safety light set, we decided to do a review. In this article, we’ll discuss the Protocol Bike Safety Light Set’s features and tell you how they fare. Hopefully, you can have an idea if this particular light set will suit your bike-lighting needs by the end of the article.
So we’ve purchased the Protocol Bike Safety Light Set, and it looks as plain Jane as can be. With a such a good price, we’re not complaining.
It comes with one main headlight and a pair of bike tire lights.
Protocol Bike Safety Light Set
The main headlight, which is supposed to be attached to the center of the handlebars, is an ultra LED light which we noticed was extremely bright when switched on. A rider will definitely see great distances with this thing attached to the front of their bike. It also has two modes; flashing and steady, which we thought was useful. Although most bike lights that are available on the market have the same feature, so there wasn’t anything particularly fantastic about the fact that it had these two modes.
The tire lights, however, had seven modes—basically, six modes of strobing and a steady feature—and was multi-colored, which is, I guess, great for some people. Strobing your tire lights, especially when it is pitch black outside, is definitely something you’d want to do to increase your visibility to oncoming traffic.
Many will appreciate the different modes in which the tire lights strobe, we think. We don’t particularly like some of the modes, to be honest, because it makes us look like we’re sitting on a spacecraft from a distance, but we suspect that many will like them. And if being visible from a distance is the point of getting yourself bike safety lights, then these will do the job really well.
Trust us: you WILL be seen from a distance, especially if you have the lights strobing in an unusual, spaceship-like manner, which these lights can definitely do.
We also liked the fact that the whole package included the AG10 button cell batteries needed to power both of the tire lights. The AAA batteries needed for the main headlight, however, wasn’t included, but this is no biggie as AAA batteries are easy to come by.
The Protocol Bike Safety Light Set’s main headlight was easy to snap on to the handlebars. Really, it only needs to be snapped and tightened, and that’s it. There was no fuss at all! And once snapped on, it wasn’t going anywhere. This baby was going to stay put no matter the terrain.
We suspect that no matter how rough the road your traversing turned out to be, this thing wouldn’t be moving and wiggling about, so Protocol deserves kudos for that.
As far as the construction of the Protocol Bike Safety Light Set is concerned, well, it is plastic. And, yes, it feels plasticky. We’ve owned a lot of bike safety lights, and some of them at least had a texture to the plastic that made them look expensive, but the Protocol bike safety light set is as plasticky as can be. Some might hate that, some might not care, but we’re telling you anyway.
You WILL break this thing if it impacts the ground even just a little bit, we suspect. It feels just like a plastic flashlight that’s been made to attach to the front of your bike, so yes, in terms of durability, your mileage may vary. To be sure, dropping the Protocol Bike Safety Light won’t break it, but hitting it against something with more than a little drop force might.
In our opinion, the cheap, almost plasticky construction of the headlight won’t be a big problem for many. We don’t expect to be crashing the bike in such a manner that would damage the headlight anyway. And even if we managed to do that, well, at least it’s less than 20 bucks, so it’s not a huge loss. But we suspect that some might take issue with how plasticky the thing is, and looks, simply from an aesthetic perspective. While I understand that, I can at least say that it has a lot of utility as a bike safety light, and, yeah, it certainly gets the job done.
Bottomline
Yes, the Protocol Bike Safety Light Set gets the job done. At less than 20 bucks, it is cheap—very cheap.
The tire lights are nice and useful, so if being visible on the road at night is your primary concern, the tire lights themselves will get the job done. The headlight is also powerful enough.
Maybe the only issue we had is that it looks like a hunk of plastic, but that’s not a big issue. Indeed, the headlight is so easy to attach and remove that you can simply remove the headlight when you don’t need it.
