Magicshine SeeMee 300 Smart rear light review

The Magicshine Seemee 300 rear light packs in high brightness, a braking response function, and ambient light sensor, plus a handy downward-glow light to help draw maximum attention to your presence on the road.

It’s also easy to use, and comes packaged with a small and tidy click mount, and a saddle rail hanger.

There are an unnecessary amount of modes and features, and claimed battery burn times seem to be quite optimistic, but it’s nevertheless proven to be an effective high-lumen, highly-reactive rear light.

Magicshine SeeMee 300 Smart rear light details and specifications

The Magicshine SeeMee 300 Smart leads with its ability to detect when you’re braking, reacting by making the light shine at its maximum output. It does this via an accelerometer and a vibration sensor.

It also has an ambient light sensor, which dictates how brightly the light will shine in each mode, when the brake light isn’t engaged (or the sensor is switched off).

This essentially gives you a set of brightnesses during the day, and another set during the night.

There’s a static low mode (20 lumens), a static high mode (100 lumens), a flash mode (100 lumens), a pulsing eco mode (20 lumens) and a pulsing smart mode (300 lumens during the day, 100 lumens at night – thanks to the ambient light sensor).

The low, high, flash and eco modes are claimed to have differing burn times depending on whether they’re activated during night or day: longer during the day, shorter at night.

This is contrary to popular logic, whereby it’s more common to be able to run lower settings at night (longer battery life), saving the very brightest for when you need to penetrate through brighter daylight or, for example, fog (shorter life).

As it is, Magicshine doesn’t define whether its claimed lumen counts are for day or night.

The light has two lensed, high-output LEDs, plus a ring of surrounding diodes.

On top of this, there’s an “Optitracing” light on the underside of the light, which projects a glow onto the road below. Conversely to the main LEDs, this light pulses in the static modes, and remains constantly on the dynamic modes.

This third light also reacts to braking, switching up to its maximum static output when you decelerate to match the main two.

The Seemee 300 Smart has an alloy body, and attaches to its bracket via a Garmin-style click-mount system. This mount fastens to the seatpost using a ladder band, which is in turn attached to an angled rubber insert that compensates for the seatpost angle.

There’s also an under-saddle mount with the same click-mount interface, which hooks over saddle rails.

The light charges via a USB-C port.

Magicshine claims that battery life can last anywhere from six hours (smart night and high static mode, at night) up to 200 hours (eco mode, in daylight). In testing, these numbers proved largely misleading with the brake function on, and still optimistic when it was switched off – more on this to come.

The Magicshine SeeMee 300 Smart rear light costs £48.99 / $59.99.

Magicshine SeeMee 300 Smart rear light performance

There can be no question that the Magicshine SeeMee 300 has plenty of features in its arsenal.

All work, and if you’re the kind of person who prefers to switch on a light and leave it to its programming (once you’ve selected your preferred mode), then there are few better on paper.

I found the ambient sensor could ably distinguish between full daylight and nighttime – it switches to nighttime settings in low light conditions during the day, which is no bad thing.

The brake function is also very good during actual braking events, switching the light up to a full static 300 lumens until it has detected that the deceleration event has ended.

That said, it can also be triggered by vibrations from poor road surfaces, which – in the UK at least – is fairly often.

There’s a valid argument here that in doing so, it helps to draw attention to you when you’re riding over more hazardous ground. But, given how often my test unit did this, it can be lit up at its brightest setting for as much time as it is on the basic setting you originally selected for.

This has a knock on effect on battery life, which renders Magicshine’s claims as largely useless – on a smooth road with no stops, you might get somewhere near them, but on everyday roads in my local area, I saw as little as half the expected battery life.

Predictability improves drastically when you switch the braking mode off – something you can’t do on the Lezyne Strip Drive Pro 300 Alert I've tested previously.

As a result, I chose to switch off the brake function, given I couldn’t 100 per cent rely upon the battery to last for the whole ride.

Tested like this in indoor ‘lab’ conditions (and left untouched), alongside other rear lights, it achieved 5 hours 10 minutes in the most power-intensive 100-lumen static mode. With this mode activated, the Optitrace down light pulses.

This particular feature impressed me. Lezyne employs a similar system with its Laser Drive Pro light, which projects lasers on the ground, but here the glow effect illuminates the ground you’re riding over, and the rear wheel to boot.

Where most rear lights focus (pun intended) on delivering light behind, a down light simply illuminates more of the surrounding area. In theory, as this is the area drivers need to avoid in order to avoid you, it’s an effective way of improving your safety on the road without chasing ever higher lumens or more distracting modes.

It’s impossible to be sure whether it has the desired effect on passing motorists, but I certainly felt at ease knowing that I had more than just the traditional backward-pointing LEDs working for me.

It’s a shame that the Optitrace light can’t be controlled on its own. When the main LEDs are in a static mode, the Optitrace light pulses, while pulsing LED modes cause the Optitrace light to remain static.

With the passage of testing, I settled on using a pulsing main LED mode with the static Optitrace light.

The Garmin-like click-mount interface makes removing the light easy, while the bracket itself is almost as easy to remove and fit itself. Despite this, the light stays firmly in place – it’s a neat solution that I wouldn’t mind seeing on more bike lights.

Magicshine SeeMee 300 Smart rear light bottom line

The Magicshine SeeMee 300 rear bike light is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to features.

All work well, while functionality remains simple. However, the brake function can be over-sensitive to vibrations from the road, which makes battery life difficult to predict.

There are redeeming qualities, though, in an excellent down light feature and an easy-to-use bracket and mount. In all, this is a good rear light.