I recently picked up a Coospo TR70 Radar Bike Light to use for my bike riding, specifically for my commute to work since it puts me on a few roads where there can be heavy/fast car traffic, mainly Hampton Avenue through Milwaukee, Butler, and Menomonee Falls.
Matt has a Garmin Varia and I thought about getting one but I still get nervous spending over $100 on something.
The Garmin Varia is $150 USD while the Coospo TR70 is $70 USD. That half-price deal really got me interested, though I was worried about quality, especially with the app, since I use my mobile instead of a cycling computer.
Oh, Trek also has their own, the Trek CarBack, which is $200 USD, which is even nore expensive! But does have the best name.
Okay, so how well does the Coospo TR70 Radar Bike Light work? Before I got it I read a few reviews, watched some videos, and now that I’ve used it for a few weeks here are my first impressions, though obviously I don’t have any other units to compare it to, so this is more “Pete’s take on a bike radar” than a full-on review.
I am impressed. I read all these reviews talking about false positives and false negatives and I’ll just say that 98% of the time it seems to work perfectly. Maybe there is a 2% or less error rate, but I don’t rely solely on the radar. I still look around, I look back, I stay aware.
Here’s an example of my use. While riding down a road where it’s best to take the lane, if I hear beeping I am 98% sure there is a car behind me. I can choose to speed up, move aside, etc. I can also look back and double-check if there’s a car, but it’s not going to change my behavior. This is specific to the route I take commuting. The radar is an additional warning system that is almost always right.
One of the roads I take is 35mph and drops to 25mph. If I am on the single-lane 35mph part and not going top speed (25mph on the ebike) and then hear the warning beeps I can hit it hard, pedal faster, and get to the 25mph part where the road goes to two lanes and I get my own lane while the cars can take the other one.
So basically I’ve tried to implement specific strategies for my riding. For me, this works well. If you just ride with no regard for cars and think the radar will be 100% accurate all the time, well… I don’t trust any machine that much.
When I commute in the protected/separated bike lane the radar will let me know when cars are coming up behind on the street. I’m not on the street, but this is still good! If I know a car is coming I can be extra careful when I come to a cross-street in case a car driver decides to turn right into my path. Again, I still look, but the warning is another prompt to look.
As for the mobile app, it has some annoyances, but it’s good enough. I did have to set my phone to not sleep the screen at 5 minutes because it would dim while the Coospo app was in the foreground. Granted, it still beeps, but you don’t see anything. Now, sometimes I have another app up front, like the Fitness app or whatever, but luckily the Coospo app will run in the background and continue to warn you with beeps if cars are approaching.
There might also be an advantage to the mobile app. I’ve read comments that with a cycling computer paired some of them do not allow you to adjust the volume. Posters have complained about the loud beeping they cannot turn down. Luckily my mobile has a volume control.
Even if the radar isn’t that great, a good quality rear bike light might be $30 or $40 USD, so the fact that for $70 USD I got a good rear bike light with a 40 hour battery life is pretty damn sweet.