Portland Design Works Danger Zone Tail Light

On the left is this product, and on the right is the Planet Bike Superflash. The Planet Bike Blinky Super Flash Tail Light has been the gold standard for many years. It had a single half watt LED and two additional less bright LEDs that flash using a flash-pop arrangement that keeps at least one lamp lit almost all the time so that drivers of cars can always see it. Off axis visibility was good, so that it didn't have to be aimed directly at the driver. It was waterproof and you could drop it repeatedly without breakage. I own several of them and have been very happy with them. But they suffer from a few shortcomings. First, they have a short repeat sequence. Drunk and high-on-drugs drivers can get mesmerized by such a sequence and will run right into a light like this like a moth to a flame. So I've been using the superflash on the sides, not the back. Second, they are very bright up close, but from a distance, with lots of other distracting lights, they get lost in the crowd. A half watt isn't very bright when there are many other 12 volt sources of light. So in a big city, they are less effective. Enter the Portland Design Works Danger Zone. It has two half watt LED that punch through the clutter of other lights in a city, and a longer repeat pattern making a drunk driver less likely to hit you with one of them. You can see from the video that it seems much brighter, though if you stop the video right at the end, both lights have a single half watt LED on at the same time and you can see that, at least at that moment, they are both identical. Otherwise, it seems well built, waterproof and off axis visibility is just as good, just like the superflash. Clip and mounting capabilities are almost identical. It's a little bigger than the superflash. However, the brightness comes with some drawbacks. First, the battery life will go down. Second it's more expensive. However, I think for a rear light, it's worth it. For a side light (I use one on each side for drivers exiting driveways and parking lots, and cross traffic), I'd stick with the superflash, due to cost and battery life issues.

As bicylcle tail lights go, this is not the most inexpensive light on the market; however, it is definitely one of the brightest and most reliable that I've seen and used. I own four other tail lights from different manufacturers of varying price and quality. None of them compare to this Portland Design Works Danger Zone Tail Light. Since I ride with my 18 month old in a child seat (WeeRide LTD Kangaroo Child Bike Seat), being visible to cars is extremely important to me even during daylight. The other lights that I've used were not very visible during the day and were all relatively small in size. This tail light is huge and bright enough to be seen even during the day. The aHA! blinking setting is a lot of fun and sure to catch the attention of drivers coming up from behind you. If you prefer not to be annoying, there is also a boring "constant on" setting (snore!). The light mounts every easily with just a screwdriver and can be quickly detached to clip to a backback or simply to prevent it from getting stolen when parking your bike. Overall this is a very high quality, practical, and fun product at a very reasonable price. I highly recommend it.

This tail light is amazing. It has real led's compared to cheap china LED's flashers and more importantly the LED is red with propper chrome reflectors and clear magnified lenses making them like mini projectors. These are the only lights we own that can attract the eye in full sunlight. The word bright is just not fitting, we call them the eye sore tail light, When I ride with my wife we can not ride behind each other unless we want to see horrible spots for a long time we rid next to each other and we can still easily see that we have a lot of "flash" occurring behind us. The flash pattern is not conventional, it flashes fast like a police beacon then slow like a light house would look then fast again. At first I thought this is not a good pattern for us but when we went out the first time with these I noticed the difference in speed causes once to notice this as if it were an eye magnet. Uses two triple A batteries and also has a builtin belt clip for when you lock up your bike in public places you can just walk away with out stuffing this light in your pocket. My wife love this light since most tights and sports bras do not have any form of storage. She also uses it on the back of her pants when she does a night run. It makes her look like a bicycle from a far and every one notices that there is a pedestrian on the road. Our friend has two of these, one he puts on his dogs collar and one on the back of his belt, this lets him walk his dog at night in full visibility of motorist who might other wise run him or his dog over.

Good light, bad mount. I've used this light for 6 years, and just picked up a new one for a new bike. I'm pleased to say the light is still excellent. It's bright, and the modes are highly visible. Having two main LEDs means you can have it flash without ever having it turn off completely. I generally use the fast pulse during the day, and the slow pulse at night. Battery life is good. It uses standard AAA's, which I consider more convenient than custom battery with USB recharge, since you can always swap in some fresh ones (I use rechargeables, and they work fine). Battery life is as advertised for me, really don't need to change them frequently at all, despite the brightness. The mount is bad though. It's certainly easy to attach, just stretch the rubber and pull it around to hook it on to the seat post, which might be nice if you are switching between bikes and don't want to buy another mount. The fit is reasonably secure, but I wouldn't be shocked if it slowly shifted position when riding on rough surfaces. The real problem is that seat post is the only place you can mount it, and even then it has a fixed angle, so it might be aimed poorly depending on the geometry of your bike. If you want to mount it on seat stay or be able to adjust the angle you'll need to buy another $8 mount. The old mount didn't have this issue. There's also no other options included for other popular mounting locations, though you can buy a rack mount. Also I'm sure a tool-less mount increases the risk of theft. Sure someone could always pop the light off, but that seems even more tempting if they can steal the whole usable unit, and even with the light off, there's always the risk that someone will pop off the mount just because they're a jerk.

I do a lot of cycling - about 5000 miles a year. A lot of that is at night because I do a lot of very long rides that take more than 12 hours to complete. I may be a little paranoid, but I really don't want to get hit by a car so my tail light is a critical piece of equipment. Whenever I see a cyclist with a really great tail light I ask them who made it and where they got it. Last November I saw my first cyclist with this tail light and I was so impressed I had to get one. Up until now my best tail light has been an eclipse which I still use as a backup. I would rather have a Dinotte but they're way too expensive for me. So what's good about this light? Well it's very bright and has two 0.5 Watt LEDs which is the same total brightness as some headlights and this is better than one 1 Watt LED because you can have more flash patterns which is very important. I have a theory that motorists pay more attention to a group of cyclists than to a single cyclist. At night, a motorist that sees complex flash patterns assumes that they are approaching a group. This light has complex flash patterns all on it's own - therefore I think it's a safer tail light. It's also easily visible at half a mile which gives motorists time to zone in and drive approriately. The light takes 2 AAA batteries (I prefer AA but you can't have everything). Even with AAA batteries the run time is an acceptable 50 hours (depending on the flash pattern you chose). The light is a bit chunky but fortunately there are a number of mounting options including seat post, seat stays, and saddle bag. You should have no problems mounting even if you ride a small frame. Turning the light on and off and selecting flash pattern is fairly easy with a pressure switch on the top of the light. I've had some feedback from cyclists behind me in the pack - they hate the flashing because it's so bright - no problem I say, just come around me and pull for a while :-) Twelve Month update: This light has developed some bizarre issues... 1. When I set it to solid mode it will flip to flashing mode a few minutes later for no apparent reason. Not cool when there is someone trying to draft you. 2. Turns on too easily. Many times I've put it away and I come back next week and the damn thing is weakly flashing. I know it was off when I stashed it. 3. Yesterday it would not turn off. Whenever I hit the switch it just toggled from fast flash to slow flash mode and back again. Had to remove the batteries, then leave it for 10 minutes, then put the batteries back in. All these issues indicate a faulty switch. I might try contacting the manufacturer.

Great little product. Worth the money. Clipped onto my "Osprey" brand backpack easily, as expected. The plastic feels thick (seems like it would be hard to scratch). Also, the batteries (x2 AAA's) are protected in a very "sealed" area (e.g. normal rain or splashes have not broken or shorted-out this little guy yet). There are three modes (x1 fast blinking, x1 slow blinking, x1 always on - - - the blinking modes rotate which of the two lights is on and the slow blink fades out of each light blink. The always on mode keeps both lights on full intensity). The light produced is MUCH brighter than I expected. In fact, it is blinding at close range - even outdoors on a sunny day. (e.g. Don't look directly into it! I just did and see red tracers every-time I blink). Also came with mounting equipment for a bike (which I did not use) - but the equipment looked and felt strong enough for me for me to say that I would be comfortable using it to mount this piece onto a bike. ----------------------------------------- Last thoughts/future updates: ----------------------------------------- Battery. This product came with the x2 (AAA) battery's already installed. They are "Excell" Brand - non-rechargeable. I don't know how long they will last, and have not tested any other "name-brand" batteries to see if the light can be made even brighter. Finally, I do not know how many hours these batteries will last for. If they ever run out, I will update this post to give an estimate of how long the batteries lasted for - as well as which mode I used the most.

I've been riding with this light nearly daily since 2012, with a pair of Eneloop AAAs inside. The batteries last for many weeks (at 5+ hours of usage per week), longer than I've bothered to track. I just recharge them roughly monthly, but I've never had them run out or have the light get really dim. The light is bright, and I like its various blinky modes — I feel like they increase provide a better riding time/visibility tradeoff than "steady" or "regular blinking". I also appreciate the tactile design of the button — I find it easy to turn it on/off by touch when it's on the back of my helmet. The physical design is nice too: the light is lightweight, the o-ring + mount design has kept water out of the light in all my rain riding, and the diffuser provides a little bit of side visibility. I also love the customer service. About 4 years into my ownership, one of the wings on the black mounting bracket broke off while changing batteries. I was able to "fix" it with duct-tape, but I also e-mailed customer service — they were helpful, polite, and a week later, I had a new bracket in the mail. I highly recommend this light, the price-performance is the best I've seen among the dozens of lights I've owned. Consider using quality NiMH batteries if you ride a lot — it's easier on the environment, and saves you shopping for batteries.

I added a star to a two star review because PDW customer service was great about helping me out with a replacement light when this thing just popped right off the back of my bike into an intersection, where some oblivious dope ran right over the giant flashing red thing. Also there is a chance that I didn't install optimally and that was a contributing factor in the "Incident". I use a topeak mtx compatible rear rack and I had a little mount from a planet bike blinky (I think) on the back of this rack. The Dander Zone light hooked right in and seemed secure so I didn't use the included seat mount because my commuter bag covers the seat post. That worked wonderfully for a couple of weeks. This light is very bright and I love the super discombobulating blinking mode, although I feel bad for riders behind me when I cross the GWB on my commute. I digress. Two weeks in the thing pops off and aforementioned dope runs right over it. PDW gets semi angry email and they immediately send a replacement. Replacement arrives and it has a nifty new rubber strappy mount similar to my Light in Motion headlight mount. Loved the new mount and I was temporarily using a bike where seat mount was fine. However, after the first day of using the new light it disappears?!?!? wt heck? I have no idea where it went and did not see or hear it come off. I figured PWD would not keep sending me new lights every week so I gave up and wrote this off as a loss. I would normally rank this mounting catastrophe worse but I have this sneaking suspicion that this was one of those confluences of user error, limited instructions, bad luck and imperfect design and I can't really hold PDW fully responsible. Plus they were awesome about sending me another light.

La mejor luz trasera de bicicleta que he comprado jamás. En la bici, que nos vean bien los automóviles y otros vehículos a motor es primordial para nuestra seguridad, y esta luz llama mucho la atención, por lo que el conductor debería estar ciego para no ser vistos. Este piloto es sencillamente ¡Impresionante! Tiene una potencia de destello muy buena y desde que la llevo, los coches y pasan mas retirados al adelantar, eso da mucha seguridad cuando uno va en bicicleta. La llevo siempre cuando salgo por algún camino o carretera que pasen vehículos, incluso de día. Por el precio que tiene no es para pensarselo, ¿cuanto vale tu vida?.

This light is stunningly bright. I wear it clipped to the back of my helmet. It clips on to the helmet adjuster perfectly. The light is blinding - so watch out for complaints from car drivers who get caught behind you and are being blinded. It really is that bright!!

This and my other "Portland Design Works Radbot 1000" are my two favorite tail lights now. Pros: - LEDs are really bright - All components are mounted on the transparent side and the whole front click back firmly on the rear single black plastic element (can be tricky to align them though) - Water seal not tested yet, but looks to be draining away from internal components and tight enough to ensure no dust either. - The two blinking modes are better than on other lights, and if you use multiple tail lights, the slow one seems to give a good battery time, while also not blinding the Cars/Bikes behind you (while I prefer aggressive blinks during daytime, in dark conditions this may become overwhelming for those behind you). This light has them all. - The two mounts supplied are sufficient for mounting anywhere on the vertical frame elements Cons(barely): - A bit on the heavy side, so make sure the mount is tight. - Would be nice to be able to mount this horizontally too (mount is designed for vertical only mounting) Would have bought a second one if it would have not been out of stock. If you don't need a light right away, this one is worth pre-ordering and waiting for!

Recently started biking after 2 yrs break. This is a 2nd light i bought, for my wife. 1st one works well and bought maybe 5 yrs ago. The battery is good and after my 2 yrs break it still light up. Bought a rechargeable one and have to charge after 2 rides. My main rear light to go. Very bright, unique light pattern and long battery. Highly recommended!

It really is a great product. It is very visible, the mounting and the supports look like they will hold. Easy to attach / detach if needed.