Review: Outbound Lighting Detour Bike Light | road. cc – road. cc

The Outbound Illumination Detour is a very clever front light for road and gravel riding. It uses a pair of LEDs with custom reflectors to cast a wide beam with the distinct cut-off at the top so it doesn’t shine straight into the eyes of oncoming riders or drivers. It has a great mounting system, charges quickly vian USB-C cables, plus has six modes that cover pretty much any situation you can imagine.

You may find more ideas – and lights to compare it with – in our guide to the best front bike lights .

> Buy now: Outbound Lights Detour with regard to £150 from Outbound Light

Illumination

Most bicycle lights have LED emitters nestled in the centre of round reflectors, sometimes with a lens over the top to shape the light beam a bit. Not the Detour. Its LED emitters sit in the best of the lamp and point down into reflectors that spread and form the ray.

The big advantage of this is that it creates the wide beam, with a brighter central portion and a hard line top edge therefore you can set it up in order to avoid shining right within the eyes of other road users. It’s great for seeing where you’re going as well as regarding being seen.

Modes

The particular Detour puts out light in 6 different ways. Apparently trying to avoid the silliness of the lumen wars ( Exhibit A : a ‘5, 000-lumen’ light for under £20) Outbound doesn’t specify exactly how much gentle the Detour puts out but rather gives a percentage of the particular maximum output, which it says is approximately 1, 100-1, 200 lumens.

All constant modes except ‘low’ drop down to just under 50% output for about 20 minutes when they get close to drained.

High mode pumps out the unit’s full possible output. It’s bright enough to see where you’re going on completely unlit roads. For night-time gravel riding, it doesn’t quite have the total-area-floodlight effect of most mountain bike systems. It illuminates the track ahead well enough but you can easily miss a turn-off if you’re not paying attention.

Adaptive mode starts out at the same level as high setting, and gradually reduces result so your eyes can easily get dark-adapted. Clever.

Medium mode puts out about 70% of maximum, and low mode a little under 50 percent. Both are plenty bright enough intended for urban driving.

> Check out there the street. cc Beam Comparison Engine

There are two commuter modes too, daytime strobe and nighttime pulse. The daytime mode keeps a very low-level continuous output plus adds a couple of flashes every couple associated with seconds. Nighttime mode pulses at about the particular level of medium setting with a strobe flash each two signal.

It’s impossible to definitively test the effect on drivers, yet using daytime strobe on an early morning ride I felt very visible, along with oncoming drivers moving all the way over upon narrow highways.

My only gripe will be that unlike many current lights, keep in mind that remember the last mode you used; turning it on always brings up full light beam, so if you want a less brilliant mode you have to cycle through them.

Run-times

Construction

Most high-end bike lamps have aluminium casings for durability and to act as heat sinks and cool the particular LED. Outbound uses what it describes as an ‘engineered resin that is not just very durable, but also conducts heat’. That keeps the weight straight down, too; it’s 70g or so lighter than a twin-LED Cateye Volt 1600 I have kicking around. (To be fair, the particular Volt’s brighter and has the big twin-cell battery, but its beam is usually nowhere near as well managed. )

Outbound’s original road bike lighting used a separate battery pack in the style of many mountain bicycle lighting systems. The Detour’s battery is definitely built into the lamp, which makes for less faff in handling this: you just pop it off your bike, plug within your charger and reverse the process when it’s charged.

We have Exposure to thank for popularising the idea of high-power all-in-one lights, moving the battery from a separate case into the light unit itself. I do like how OUtbound has taken it a step further here, shaping the case around the particular needs of the LEDs and reflectors rather than wrapping a big torch around the battery.

Mounting

The Detour’s mounting system nicks an idea from the world associated with photography. It’s basically the scaled-down Manfrotto RC2 quick release, as used to fit and remove cameras from tripods. When you push the mounting plate on the light into the particular bracket, a spring-loaded latch closes automatically and holds the light firmly in place. It is, ahem, brilliantly convenient.

The mount has the 35mm handlebar clamp, with a shim to fit 31. 8mm bars. That’s a bit of a tell that Outbound specialises in mountain bike lights because 35mm is far more common on mountain bikes compared to road bikes. Outbound says shims for smaller handlebars are available, but for the cost of this light they really should be included in the package. To its credit, customer feedback on the site has several examples of Outbound sending free shims to people who forgot to order them with their light.

Getting the position of the Detour just right will be tricky. There’s a manual screw on the particular mount so you can loosen it to adjust the angle without having in order to mess with the particular main clamp, but this has teeth for grip so you can only change the angle within increments of a shade over eight degrees, which is usually the difference between it pointing mostly at the road in front of you and it lighting up roadside trees. I ended up carrying the particular included 2. 5mm hex key therefore I could tweak the angle till I got it just so.

Charging

Outbound includes two USB-C cables to charge the particular unit, one with a good USB-C plug at both ends plus the other with good old USB-A.

As you charge the Detour, the particular four green LEDs on the top light upward one at a time in order to animate ‘filling’ and show what’s happening. When it’s charged, all four glow. Outbound says it takes about two hours to reach 85%, then switches to trickle charge to protect the battery. We found all four LEDs came on after 2hrs 17mins using a three-amp USB-C PD power source. Which fast; high-power lights usually take three hours or more to take a full charge. Outbound cautions that it’ll take a lot longer along with power sources that don’t put out as much current, so if you’ve got the drawer full of them, pick the particular highest-rated.

You can also charge the Detour through a ‘power bank’ battery pack while a person ride, so if you need to extend the run-time for an all-nighter, you can. Again, go for a pack that can output three amps.

Value

There aren’t many lights easily available in the UK with a beam pattern that’s tailored for street riding. Most simply put the big blob of lighting out front.

Exposure’s Strada lamps are the particular obvious competitor, but they start at £265, though that will price does include a charger and a remote switch.

The Light & Motion Seca Comp 2000 is similarly spendy in £255, plus despite a few feature shortfalls puts out there a lot of very useful gentle without dazzling oncoming road users (read Mike’s review for more details).

If you want a light that’s friendly to other road users for urban use, get a look at the £50 Gemini Atlas , which meets the German StVZO standard for its beam shape. Lezyne makes probably the largest range of StVZO lights very easily available in the united kingdom.

Who should buy the Outbound Lighting Detour?

If a person love in order to ride at night and want a front lighting that reduces dazzle to road customers, this is a great light. Clever features like the attach, adaptive mode and the particular ability to run it off an external battery for longer life add to the appeal. The particular only major downside is that it’s currently only available direct from your manufacturer, which adds £90 with regard to shipping to the price.

Verdict

Excellent front light with dazzle-reducing shaped beam