NiteRider Bullet 200 rear light review

The NiteRider Bullet 200 rear bike light is certainly distinctive in design.

That design isn’t all for show, though. It works well to provide almost 360 degrees of visibility, while it’s easy to use and plenty powerful enough, even if it doesn’t have a prominent ‘day flash’ mode.

The bracket system could be a bit more secure, but the NiteRider Bullet 200 remains a very good rear light.

NiteRider Bullet 200 rear light details and specifications

The NiteRider Bullet 200, as the name suggests, is capable of producing up to 200 lumens from a circular arrangement of LEDs.

These are ensconced on a surface that helps spread the light emitted, effectively producing a ring of light around the ‘central reservation’, on which the power button lives.

On the forward-facing side of the light, there’s a second ring with its own LEDs.

It offers near 360-degree visibility, because the ring protrudes beyond the width of a seatpost (aside, of course, from when your legs partially obscure it when riding).

There are six modes: high and low static, a fast flash, a combined mode where the rearward-facing LEDs are flashing and the forward-facing LEDs are on static, an alternating flash and a pulse mode.

The options are plenty, although a specific day flash mode could be considered missing, if you don’t consider the 200-lumen fast flash mode disruptive enough. That said, NiteRider says the flash modes are ‘daylight visible’.

Unusually, the most power-hungry mode is the pulse setting (as opposed to the high static mode), and this is said to deliver 10 hours of burn time. The high static mode is claimed to give out at 11 hours 45 minutes.

The backside of the light body features a recess, into which a rubber insert slides. This is wedged at the bottom, mostly compensating for an angled seatpost. A flat version isn’t supplied for bikes with especially steep seatposts, such as time trial bikes.

Two bands are supplied, one for round and D-shaped seatposts, the other for bladed aero posts.

The light charges via micro-USB – NiteRider provides a USB-A to micro-USB charge cable.

The NiteRider Bullet 200 costs £35 / $44.99.

NiteRider Bullet 200 rear light performance

As with any of the best bike lights, when I used the Bullet 200, I felt confident I was visible.

Although there are a few very impressive lights that can put out more power, the distinctive ring design stands out in a crowd.

Unless it’s full sunshine you want to be seen in, the NiteRider Bullet 200 will have you covered.

The forward-facing array of LEDs is a boon when riding in the dark. Although my legs partially obscure them, the LEDs are either visible from the front, or cast a red glow on the bike’s tubes and my legs.

My legs might be covered in black tights most of the time at the moment, but it adds to my visibility regardless. Importantly, the forward glow doesn’t distract.

The light is easy to use, with the usual long press to switch it on and off, and repeated presses to cycle through modes. It doesn’t get simpler than that.

The bracket’s angle compensation is useful to help the light shine prominently (i.e. near enough directly backwards). That said, the bracket is prone to moving slightly when riding over rough tarmac and potholes.

The straps are thick and can take being pulled tightly, but the light body can end up edging to the left or right.

In the first instance, I hadn’t pulled the strap to a tight enough notch (this takes some gusto and I was initially fearful of snapping it), but thereafter the same still happened, just to a lesser extent.

It’s possible the long design could create a kind of pendulum effect – roll over a vibration and shock-inducing road surface, and the unsupported weight at the extreme end of the light can exacerbate the forces, causing it to edge away from perfect orientation.

This would, in theory, be made worse if the strap tension wasn’t well distributed (which can be as much down to user error as design flaw).

It’s a niggle, but if the bracket better supported the light body, rather than just pulling it tightly to the seatpost, this might be avoided completely.

If you don’t mind the fact that the Bullet 200 still uses the older micro-USB standard, there’s little else to criticise.

Micro-USB isn’t as sturdy or reliable as USB-C, on paper, but it’s not unreasonable to think that the vast majority of people will still have peripherals using the older standard (and spare cables to boot), in addition to the one supplied.

My runtime, in the high static mode, was 11 hours 10 minutes. This is 35 minutes shy of NiteRider’s claim, but still more than enough for me to carry out three 80km rides with some time to spare.

NiteRider Bullet 200 rear light bottom line

The NiteRider Bullet 200 may feature the aging micro-USB charging protocol and have a bracket that allows slightly more movement than is ideal, but these are small issues in the grand scheme of things.

It’s bright, stands out in a crowd, features decent runtimes and – in my wholly subjective opinion – looks pretty cool too.

Given that it costs less than a lot of the best and most powerful rear bike lights, it is the final plus point that earns it a spot among them.