Ravemen TR50 review

Ravemen has developed a reputation for impressive bike lights at reasonable prices - not least the PR1600 front lamp tested recently - but how does the TR50 rear light perform?

Ravemen TR50 details and specification

The Ravemen TR50 is supplied with mounting options for helmets, and narrow and oversize tubes, and it’s also got an inbuilt clip for attaching it to clothing or straps.

The tube mount is angle adjustable and secured via the supplied rubber O-rings. The light has an IPX4 waterproof rating to protect against water splashes from any direction, and Ravemen claims the TR50 is resistant to impacts up to 1m.

The USB rechargeable lithium-ion battery powers two rows of COB-style LEDs that offer good side-on visibility. The light is turned on and off with a button on the side but its modes are selected and changed using a touch-sensitive area on top of the light.

It has five modes: two constant (with claimed outputs of 30 and 10 lumens), two flashing (50 and 10 lumens) and one pulse (10 lumens). There’s a low battery and charge indicator, and when the battery nears the end of its life the light switches to flashing mode.

Ravemen TR50 performance

The TR50’s mount needs to be semi-assembled from the off. It has two different sticky pads — one flat, one curved — that need to be bonded to the plastic part of the clamp depending on what sort of surface you’re mounting the light to.

Unfortunately the sticky rubber is one-use only, so if you select the wrong one or need to change it at a later date for the other one you will need to discard the used rubber mount.

I found that the deeper, more curved mount was suitable for almost all of the surfaces I tried to mount the light to. I also found that the mount, even when using the more curved version, wasn’t very secure on the bike.

It twists easily when knocked because the mounting area is quite short and the light unit fairly heavy. Even using the smallest and, therefore, tightest O-ring, stability wasn’t ideal, though vibrations and general trail chatter weren’t a problem.

The light and its mount are quite bulky, making it sit fairly proud, and on a full-suspension bike’s seat tube or post this makes tyre contact more likely when the suspension bottoms-out, though this will affect a limited number of riders.

The light clips on to the mount, and this seems fairly secure, but the angle adjustment on the mount itself can come loose and I recommend checking the Phillips screw is tight enough before heading out.

Based on my experience I’d suggest the light is best suited to mounting on clothing or straps on bags rather than frames, and no other mounting options — such as seat rails — are available in the retail packaging.

The button to turn the light on is small and located on the side of the unit. To cycle between its functions, there’s a small touchpad that doesn’t require the physical depression of a button to operate. This is a great feature and makes changing modes on the fly as practical as it can be for a rear light.

In use, the standard flash setting has long gaps between each burst of light and the most usable settings were the rapid flashing and pulse modes.

The constant light emitted wasn’t especially bright and required careful adjustment to get it to shine its rather focused beam in a way to make me most visible.

Side-on visibility is fairly good - up to 60 degrees from the rear, dropping off significantly until 90 degrees when the light on offer is produced by the brightness of the LEDs rather than any specific beam projection. There is also a dark spot at 20 degrees from the rear of the light.

Run time for the most powerful constant setting (30 lumens) was recorded at 2 hours 25 minutes during testing - shorter than claimed (2 hours and 42 minutes). Considering the relatively low lumen output, I was expecting it to last longer than it did on its max setting.

Ravemen TR50 bottom line

The touch to change mode is impressive, but the Ravemen TR50's relatively low power output and mounting bracket don’t make it the best choice based on other rear lights I’ve tested recently.