Thanks for tuning in today we're going to be reviewing the Moon Sport Helix Sense 300 and 450.
One common question when it comes to bike taillights is how many lumens do you need
for daytime visibility. Moon Sport's answer to that question is the new Helix Sense
which comes in both a 300 lumen and a 450 lumen variations. Not only are these taillights
absurdly bright but they also incorporate a motion sensor to detect when you're braking.
You can see we have both variations right here they're very similar in appearance.
Looking at the 450 packaging you have a nice cutout with the yellow and nice open body so
you can actually interact with the taillight look at it touch the button the back you have all the
specs written on there. Both the nearly identical except for the slightly different size
and different outputs. I'll go ahead and take the 450 out of the box and go over the specs. Retail
price on these are $69.99 for the 300 and then $80.99 for the 450. The Helix Sense 300 obviously
has 300 lumen maximum output while the 450 has the brighter 450 lumen output. They both have a 300
degree side visibility so these are really visible from any angle and they have USB Type-C charging
ports which are great to see on the bike products as a lot of manufacturers still use micro usb.
These also have Moon Sports variable lumen system which means you can actually adjust
the lumen output in every single mode to the exact value you want by simply ramping it up and down
and letting go of the button. The main difference between these two is you can always see the 450s
larger and brighter. In terms of what you get with them you get simple packaging cardboard box nicely
nice and environmentally friendly. You get the seat post mount and you can see it actually comes with
two different rubber backings one of them is angled to account for seatpost angle and the other one is
straight. You got a USB Type-C charging cable with the yellow coloring that we see with a lot of the
Moon products. You get two zip ties for a little more secure mounting if desired.
You get the clamp or the buckle here this is really nice if you want to put this on
your backpack or clothing you can just snap this directly on there. Then you have a second strap
which you can use instead of the longer one that's pre-attached so if you have a smaller diameter
seat post or you want to put on your seat stay you can easily do that. The 300 has nearly identical
accessories as well. Now take a look at the weight of the lights. Here we have the 450 by
itself that comes in at 46 grams and then we have the 300 which is slightly smaller
and not surprisingly a little bit lighter at 36. Then we have the seatpost mount with
the longer strap it's 10 grams and then the body clip comes in at six.
Visually the Helix 300 and the 450 are nearly identical you can see the same
design the 450 is simply longer to achieve the higher lumen output and has a larger battery.
So if we focus on one of them you can see you have a nice large red lens
it's raised to so from the sides you can actually see the light and that gives it the 300
degree visibility it has a COB led design which you can tell by all these little circuits
all the leds on the circuit board. There's essentially three boards so you can see
depending on which mode you're in it'll either keep the sides constant and flash the middle or
flash or keep all of them constant uniformly. One power button in the middle which is really easy
to access and quite a bit of functionality we'll go over a little bit later. Helix Sense printed
on the side this one's a 450, the 300 says 300 and on the other side you just have the zigzaggy pattern
with the Sense logo here and then the Moon Sport. They also have moon printed right onto the lens
so you can see that in some angles it's actually you can print it on there
so it's a pretty attractive design with a slender design really a hide behind your seat post.
You have a Garmin style quarter turn mount it's obviously smaller than a standard
Garmin computer mount but has the same functionality so it has two raised tabs
and you simply line them up and then rotate it so very secure and very easy to take off so if
you're a commuter or just stopping somewhere for a break you can easily pop this off
charge it or just put it in your pocket. You have USB Type-C charging which again really nice to see.
A lot of the bigger companies still are using micro usb and a nice big gasket also has a very
high IP68 rating which means you can actually put this underwater briefly and not worry about it.
Branding is also very simple as you saw just moon sport hidden on here so very attractive looking
tail light all together. They also include all the mounts here which is really nice
so you get the standard seat post mount and two different rubber pieces so you can pop this off
and have the angled one if you have an angled seat post or leave the flat one if you want
to put on your seat stay. Simple rubber strap design with a hook and two different straps
you even include a body clip typically this is an extra purchase and this is great if you want
to put this on your backpack saddlebag or even clothing and it's really simple to use you just
slide it on there. They even have the saddle mount which is a simple piece so this will go
on your saddle rails you can see it just slides over and then again same design locks into place.
Now the user interface on this is pretty complicated and that's one disadvantage
of a lot of the Moon Sport products especially with one button. They've really overloaded
a lot of the action so normal day-to-day use is pretty simple you hold just press it to turn it on
press it again to cycle through these three different flash modes.
Double press to go to the solid mode you have two solid modes
and then within each mode you can actually do a full adjustment of the lumens by simply holding it
and then this will ramp up and down and you see it flashes when it's at the
maximum and then it will ramp all the way down to the minimum and flash. So pretty simple to use and
you just release it. Now it's a nice feature but obviously I think most users won't really care
the defaults are pretty good already so you don't really need to do that much adjustment.
There's also a couple other modes there's a lockout mode and the sense mode which is the
indication that you can do brake sensing so you can see here there's no light right now
to turn on the brake sensor you turn the light off hold it until it flashes so now it's on
and you can see there's a green flashing light here which is a nice indicator that the battery
the motion sensor is actually active. So with the brake sensor it'll actually go to a solid full
brightness setting to indicate people behind you that you're actually slowing down so you can see
off the bike it's super sensitive just because of the orientation
but even if you do a little bit of slow down you can see it'll go full solid.
Then you also have the full lockout mode so if you're transporting this
you don't want it to actually turn on because the button is raised so you can see if it gets nudged
it'll actually turn on in your backpack you simply hold it for about 10 seconds and if you
hold it for 15 you can do a full reset back to the factory default. So you can see if i hold it here
it'll turn i'll toggle the brake sensor on off that does the lockout if you wait long enough
this is the full factory reset. It's a little bit overly complicated but
for day-to-day use you don't have to worry about those extra functionality.
Now let's take a look at the taillight output modes. It comes pre-programmed with a couple of
constant modes and a few flash variations. You can see some of them have generic names like
mode one mode two flash one flash two that's because you can actually adjust the lumen
output for each mode using the variable lumen system so you can really change the runtime.
The more interesting one here is the daytime flash it is very bright and goes up to the maximum
450 lumen and with the 450 has 11 hour runtime so you can see here it is very bright it'll flash at
the lower level and then the full one to really catch your eye. So really works well whether you're
riding in urban settings or rural settings as we are here. For the brake sensor performance here you can
see the daytime flash on the road it actually works pretty well but it also does have false
positives like any brake sensor. It doesn't know when you're actually braking it just can sense the
deceleration which can be triggered on potholes or variations in the road so you actually see up here
it just triggered accidentally and goes to the full 450 lumen really catching your eye
but when you do actually stop it does work so it's kind of a mixed bag. It does reduce the run time
when it gets triggered but you simply have to use it with caution it's always going to have a couple
of false positives but otherwise very bright taillight and great for daytime or nighttime use.
Now let's do a little comparison between the Helix sense and some other taillights on the market.
Here we have the 450 and the 300 and as we saw earlier just slight difference in the height.
We've also reviewed some of other Moon Sports tail lights like the Cerberus.
You can see it's a three led design so it actually has an led on the front
an led on the side and then another one on the other side so really cool design and it gives you
that three-headed look with great side visibility. It is a little bit bulkier than the helix sense and it
doesn't have the brake sensor and again the Helix Sense lights are quite bright at 300 and 450 lumen.
There are other taillights on the market like the Planet Bike Royo 100 which has a more traditional design.
It has a large transparent body very bright center led and then dual led design to really catch your eye.
Very basic feature set but much more affordable than the Helix Sense and comes with a variety of
mounts right out of the box just like the Helix does. There's other form factors out there too
the NiteRider Bullet 200 is probably one of our favorite a dual led designs. You have COB
leds on the front and rear so you get these really interesting design patterns and almost 360 degree
visibility as it's actually wider than the mount itself so you can see it from almost any angle
but quite a bit bulkier so if you were to mount this on your seat post it would really
bulge out while the Helix Sense would hide behind it. They're more traditional tail
lights like the Bontrager Flare RT very popular model highly focused center led
so you can see from side angles it doesn't look that bright even with the little side windows
but from a direct angle it is very bright much more compact so it looks really good on your bike
but obviously it doesn't have the power that the Helix Sense does or the built-in brake
sensor. Magicshine has some similar rectangular and square lights this is their Seemee 200 v2 so it's
a little bit sleeker and easier to use than the previous version and what really separates this
from the other lights on the market is the dual led design so you can see it has a tracer led on
the bottom that really lights up the road and also quite bright a 200 lumen but you can see
a little bit more rectangular and doesn't have that big large face like the Helix Sense. There's
smaller variations like the Seemee 150 doesn't have the bottom tracer led but again quite
bright with the dual lighting element center led and then the ring so it really depends what
you're looking for if you want more features like the brake sensor and the variable lumen system
that's something you can really only get with the Moon Sport. It provides a lot of customization
but just different form factor and longer than some of the more traditional tail lights.
Now let's go over the pros and cons for the Helix Sense taillights. What we like about them is that
they are absurdly bright whether you pick the 300 or the 450 lumen version both are more than
daytime visible they also have sleek and modern COB led designs that hide well behind a seatpost.
Moon Sport also includes quite a few mounts with the lights so you don't have to purchase them
separately which is always nice. Some of the cons for the taillights is the fact that just have a
basic low battery status indicator it'd be great to see a multi-level one so you know when you have
to recharge it. Also that single button interface can be quite complicated you have a variable lumen
system you have a lockout mode and you have the ability to turn the sensor on and off so
an additional button would probably help out here. Taking everything into account would give
the Helix Sense taillights an 8.9 out of 10. These are really absurdly bright taillights
that have a lot of features. Thanks for watching this review don't forget to like and subscribe.
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