Skully Skull Lights
Like several prominent light manufacturers, the Taiwanese company S-Sun specializes in underwater diving lights in addition to bicycle and general outdoor lighting. So they not only know a thing or two about bulbs and reflectors, they’re arguably among the best at making waterproof electronic equipment.
The Skully brand of lights is a bit of a departure from S-Sun’s typical products, which are generally intended for performance-minded athletes and adventurers. These fun little silicone skulls with LED eyeballs are marketed to the lifestyle audience, so they’re purposely cute and cool at once. In my experience, anyone who sees them in person wants one for their bike, too.
As much as the Skully lights are designed to be fun, they’re also quite functional. At roughly 20 lumens, they’re not going to take the place of a high-powered headlight or tail light, but they’re definitely bright enough to help you be seen in traffic (they are claimed to be visible from 600 m). And the mounting system is really quite clever—the arms can be crossed over to attach the unit to either a horizontal or vertical tube from 10-35 mm diameter.
The roughly $17 Skully lights are available with white, red, green or blue LEDs and the silicone bodies come in black, red, blue, purple, orange, yellow, white, green and pink.
Check out skully.com.tw
Planet Bike Superflash Turbo
Planet Bike makes some of more popular blinkie lights out there, with the time tested Superflash being unmistakable on the road. The new Superflash Turbo ups the ante with a higher powered 1 Watt LED (the old Superflash was a 1/2 Watt), while keeping the retail price right around the $30 mark. The flash pattern has been turned to eleven as well on the Turbo model, with an even more “random-looking” pattern that is truly eye catching, and according to the literature visible from a mile away. It’s so bright that I’d recommend getting a less powerful blinkie for group rides, as I’d hate to get caught behind this for long. For commuting and general night riding however, light it up, and this does the job. Flash, steady and off are the only choices here, making it easy to turn on/off even with gloves on and keys in hand. The pair of AAA batteries are longer lasting than the button-cells in other lights, and rechargeable versions are readily available for every day riders. If you’re looking for one of the brightest tail lights out there, this is a solid choice.
Check out www.planetbike.com