Thanks for tuning in today we're going to be reviewing the Knog Blinder Road
400 bicycle headlight. Since its 2012 introduction the Knog Blinder road lights have been popular
lights among road cyclists. The Blinder road lights offer compact and lightweight design with
great output. Today we're going to be looking at the latest variation the Blinder Road 400
which benefits from numerous improvements over the years in design and led technology. In terms of
packaging they've gone very green you can see cardboard box minimal plastics
and the specs printed directly on there. This is the 400 version but they also offer a 600 version.
Specs are printed on the side what's cool about this they've actually added AR technology
(augmented reality) so if you grab your phone and have a qr app you can just click on it
and then you'll see that little indicator. That actually gives you an AR version of the light
so you can actually interact with it and look at it in three dimensions. So really cool feature and
because there's no window or plastics needed to look inside. This is a great way to interact with
the light and see what you're going to get. So with that let's go ahead and take it out of the
box. Retail price on this is $69.95 it has 400 lumen output and this features a dual led design.
You have a narrow beam combined with a wider beam so you have mixed optics so you can really
optimize it for whatever you're trying to ride or speed. It's IP67 rated which
means it can actually go underwater up to one meter or more for up to 30 minutes which is more
than enough for most cyclists. It has eight output modes you can either run each led independently
or run them together in constant modes or flash and then high low on each. What's also really
cool about this it has an integrated USB Type A connector directly in here so you can actually
just plug this in directly to your computer and charge it without needing another connector.
In terms of what comes with it obviously you get the light and a little protective film on there.
You get a second strap so this is a little clasp here
so there's a shorter one and then a longer one so you can swap this out if you have
a larger diameter handlebar. You get a little connector because of this port
placement it's not really placed that well so you actually need some space beneath the charging port
so if you have a computer or something thinner where you don't have that extra space you can
actually connect this directly to the little adapter and then plug this directly into the port.
You also have a little instruction manual in here and again you'll notice it's very
minimal. There's no plastics in here at all just simple cardboard and a basic quick start guide
printed right here. Now lets take a look at the weight of the light. This is with the smaller attachment
so that comes in at 68 grams so pretty lightweight.
The Blinder Road 400 has a very compact and wide form factor you can see it's really designed to
hug up next to your handlebars and be wider instead of taller or longer. You see the form
factor is very sleek with a metal body dual leds here you can actually see the exposed screws
and despite that it actually is ip67 rated which is very high. You have nice fins integrated
directly in here for heat dissipation and then the back mount molded directly into it.
This reminds me a lot of the Specialized Flux lights in terms of the visual design but it
uses a more common rubber strap style mount. What's unique about this mount is it combines the strap
with this polycarbonate clasp so a little more secure than a traditional simple
rubber band. So you can see it has two pieces essentially you have one side with this rubber
and the other side has a flexible hook so that's what's really nice about this it can accommodate
different handlebars so it can go more narrow if you have arrow bars or standard road bars you
can go wider and if you have a larger diameter you can see this actually flexes so very clever
design and then instead of just a rubber band to a hook it's a rubber band through a little clasp
and then that little clasp goes under and into it so easier to handle and you don't
have to really stretch this out as much you simply pull this over and then up and on top
so a nice clever design. In terms of the leds you have two of them they're CREE leds with a white
color. It has a narrow beam and then a wider beam so the narrow beam is on the left when you're
looking at it from the mounting location and that has a 12 degree beam so a little bit more
focused and that's great for faster higher speed riding where you want to see further ahead of
you. Then you have a wider beam on the right which is 32 degrees the main difference with this is
you can actually see the reflector on the inside this one has the dimples on there well that one's
more focused so that helps it distribute the light more. If you turn it on here
you can actually see that here simple circular pattern and if we switch to the other one
it's a more focused or more distributed so you can see that there they're pretty subtle but
helps with the actual distribution on the road and you can pick the one that works for you.
There's a total of four operation modes you can run each led independently
so you can run either both together both of them in flash just the left or just the right and then
within each mode you can actually do a low high so it's a pretty simple interface. When you're in the
high mode there's a little indicator here that shows you're in high and then when your normal
mode it turns off. This is also the location of the low battery indicator this will turn red
once you're less than about 15 percent. There is no other multi-level indicator which is a little bit
disappointing it's always nice to have some way to check instead of just knowing you're low or normal.
Simple interface though you have two buttons you have the mode one where you just click
through and cycle through the options hold it to turn it on or off. You have mode memory so when
you turn it back on it will remember the mode you're on so that's a really nice feature you
don't have to constantly cycle through them and then again total of eight modes as you
can go low high within each of those modes so a nice simple interface and plenty of options here.
You can definitely use this as a daytime be-seen light as it's plenty bright with the flash modes
or use it on darker trails if you're doing urban cycling or short stints on night roads.
At only 400 lumens it's not that bright though I would recommend going up to a thousand or more
if you're doing a lot of extended nighttime riding but if you're on a road bike and you just
get caught in the darker weather this is a good option. There also is an $85 600 lumen version so
if you need a little more power and like this form factor you can upgrade to that.
Now take a look at the output modes of the light there are eight modes to choose from you can run
each beam independently. Here we have the wide beam and you can run that in low high then you have the
low beam which also has low high setting and you can see the runtimes in general are pretty low
just because of the small size of the integrated battery. There is also a dual mode which can run both
leds and give you a combined beam and can give you up to one hour runtime in the high mode.
There's also two flash modes to choose from. You have one that switches between the left right led
for eight hours and then a nighttime flash which keeps one constant and flashes the other for three.
During the daytime we recommend using the low flash mode which alternates between them and gives
you the highest run time. At night you can use this as your primary light but at only 400 lumens it's
not that bright especially for higher speed riding we recommend keeping this for urban riding or just
around town and because of the runtimes being so low you don't want to run this on very long
rides as you'll definitely run out of battery. You can already see here in our video the red
light is on for the low battery setting and compared to the Fenix on the right you can
see just how much brighter a 1200 lumen or 1600 lumen light is compared to a 400 lumen light
so you definitely want to choose wisely. The nice thing about the
Knog 400 is it's so small and compact really looks compact on your handlebar you don't need
big battery so it's great alternative for urban riding or people don't ride at night that often.
Now let's compare the Blinder Road with other lights on the market. Here we have the Topeak
Headlux 400 it's the same dual led design same output but you can see very different design
methodology. Where the Knog here is very compact but wide the Topeak is thin but long so this
is great for helmet mounting where the Blinder wouldn't really work without some kind of adapter.
Instead the Blinder has the dual led design that can be run individually
and more focused beam and then the wider beam while the Topeak can only be run in the dual
mode together with a couple of constant modes and a flash so different designs but a little
more compact so if you're just looking for a flashing light the Headlux is a good option but
if you want something that can actually illuminate the road the Blinder is a good option. Now we've
also seen this USB design before so here's the Light & Motion Vya Pro so it has a usb directly built in. What's cool
about this there's a buttonless design but again this is a single led and it's more for being
seen so similarly priced but a lot less lumens and much more focus. So this is great if you want to be
doing daytime riding and want a daytime visible light don't want to worry about cables and have
just a simple mount so but a lot less output and different kind of goals than the Blinder.
The Bontrager Ion light is also very popular it has bluetooth connectivity so you can actually see it
on your cell phone or your Garmin unit. You can see focus single led design side cutout
again it's expensive I think similarly priced to the Knog here and a lot less output at only
200 lumen and simple kind of clasp rubber design as well but a lot more compact because it's a
single led so you can see it's essentially half of this and great for more versatile compact setups.
Now if you're doing a lot of nighttime riding i would recommend going up to
1000 or more lumens so you really want to see the road so if you're doing urban riding this
400 lumen is good but you can see with the Magicshine RN 1500 here especially this beautiful blue
has a lot more output than the 400 lumens that the Blinder can put out.
So especially as you go up you can see it's pretty obvious that you just can't compete with it
so I definitely picked the one that works for you and there's a lot of options but
what's nice about the Blinder it's very compact and a neat setup especially for daytime riding.
Now let's go over the pros and cons for the Knog 400. What we like about it it has an attractive
visual design as with all of Knog lights it looks great on your bike and very sleek.
You also have an easy to use dual button interface that lets you switch it between low high or the
output mode so it's very easy to navigate. Also you have an eye-catching and daytime visible flash
which is gives you up to eight hours of runtime which is great for daytime use.
Some of the cons for the light is the fact that you have low run times at the higher lumen outputs
so you're limited to about an hour in the full 400 lumens so you want to use this with caution
for longer rides. Also the usb connector although really cool the way they
integrated a swivel mount is a little bit inconvenient you can't really place it on
all usb ports you need space underneath it which is why they included a charging cable.
Also it does require an adapter to use without front mounts as it does not use a Garmin style mount
instead you have to purchase an affordable but separate adapter if you wanted to mount this
to a Garmin or GoPro adapter. Taking everything into account we'd give the Blinder 400 an 8.7
out of 10. It's a bright and stylish headlight that's great for urban use or daytime riding.
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