Lezyne

Strip Drive 300 Plus Tail Light

Poor design

Familiarity:

I've used it several times

Lezyne's motto is "Engineered Design", which I have to say, given the products of theirs I've tested is just word salad: a couple words tossed together to lead people to think that they're doing something special and thus, justify their high prices. Spoiler: They fail at the "design" part, which means... they're just charging more money. Case in point here: 300lumen blinky light for the back of the bike. Bright? Sure. Multiple modes? Yep. Battery life? Pretty good - corresponds to how bright and how often the light is on / blinking. Design: [sad trombone] Apparently, the "engineers" who "design" things at Lezyne forgot to take a look at a bike and make note of the fact that where this light is to be mounted (seatpost or seat-tube) is slanted back at an angle of ~72-74°, meaning roughly 15° from straight up-and-down. The mounting portion of this, though, perfectly straight up and down, meaning that your blinky light (which you desperately want to say HERE I AM!!! to cars coming from behind) is point down toward the ground at a 15° angle. So, unless the aforementioned vehicle is coming at you from the centre of the earth roughly 2-3m behind your bike, the biggest impact of the light is being wasted. Sure, it's still visible, but for almost $50 from a company that spouts "engineered design" as a mantra....pretty weak effort. Look at the photo attached (and this is one of Lezyne's own marketing photos): does a great job of lighting up that rear tire because.....? Save your money, go buy something for half the price that does point straight back. I'd return it, but I missed the window, so I'm stuck trying to cobble together some mounting system that has the "strip" perpendicular to the ground instead of pointing at it.