Bike reviews

Cateye TL-LD1000 LED Bicycle Tail and Safety Light (Red)

3 years and still going strong!

This little light has worked great for me for over three years now -- has nice front and side flashers, but like one of the other reviewers commented, it's definitely a bit on the bulky side.

Great at first then becomes nearly useless

I was impressed by the brightness of this light and also liked the fact that there was some illumination on both ends. The problem was that after a couple months of use, the light would stop working in the middle of a ride. Since it is a tail light, it is hard to stop and monitor it all the time, so for significant amounts of time I would be riding with my primary flasher not functioning. NOT GOOD. Since the other reviewer had the same problem with 2 units, that I had with mine, it does seem that they didn't get the bugs worked out of this product before selling it. In addition, if you mount the light on the seatpost horizontally, it is wide enough your legs will probably strike it. Mounting it vertically is difficult unless you have other brackets available. I'd recommend you pass on this light.

GREAT when it works. But does it have a design flaw?

When it's working properly, the TL-LD1000 is unarguably the BEST rear bicycle light available. I know because I've tried quite a few, including other Cateye models. The light is essentially two very bright, independently controllable, 3-LED taillights in a single package. So, for example, I set the bottom triad of LEDs to blink and the upper triad to strobe back-and-forth. Both of the independently controllable lights are readily visible throughout a wide vertical and horizontal axis. But note that I'm on my second TL-LD1000. And so I now find myself wondering if the light suffers from a fundamental design flaw. The first TL-LD1000 I bought lasted a bit less than a year of regular use before it begin to spontaneously extinguish itself in response to normal road bumps. For a while a sharp slap would restore the light to operation, but the condition deteriorated: The light remained operational for a shorter period after each slap. In response, I tried new batteries. I tried cleaning the battery contacts with a cotton swap and alcohol. I tried wrapping the batteries with some stretchy foam to help hold them tightly in place. None of those steps helped. So after an email exchange with Cateye, I sent my malfunctioning light in and the company promptly replaced it with a new one. I've used my second TL-LD1000 for just a bit less than a year, and now it too is spontaneously extinguishing itself and I'm once again slapping it to restore it to operation. So, I would encourage other TL-LD1000 users to report on how reliably their light has worked and for how long. As I said, it's an EXCELLENT tail light when it works. But from the standpoint of the light's long-term reliability, my experience has been zero-for-two...

Keyword : mountian+bike