Knog PWR Mountain front light review

Knog builds plenty of elegant, simple and very effective accessories from lights to locks as well as bells and other gadgets. The PWR Mountain keeps true to this, proving to be very versatile and jam-packed with features. But does the light’s list of other features dilute its ability to go head-to-head with dedicated units?

Knog PWR Mountain details and specification

The PWR Mountain is a modular light and touts some interesting and well thought-out elements. Although it’s delivered with the maximum 10,000mAh power bank that Knog offers, it’s possible to swap out any Knog power bank with any of its light heads.

The PWR Mountain not only has Knog's biggest battery, but also the brightest light head, putting out a claimed 2,000 lumens from eight LEDs. Knog claims the light emits a circular beam pattern to flood the terrain with light in front of you.

The plastic bar mount is compatible with both 31.8mm and 35mm bars thanks to an included rubber shim. The light slides on to the mount via a slot on the battery pack’s body, and fastens using a small thumb wheel that extends a metal tooth into a recess in the battery pack.

There’s a battery life indicator on the light’s body that displays remaining charge and the light’s six modes are cycled by twisting the light head. The light is turned on and off by twisting and holding the head for a short period of time. In addition to the six factory modes you can programme other settings using the ModeMaker app on your computer.

The light is supplied with two USB cables: one to charge the light and one to charge your own devices using the light as a power bank. Although other accessories aren’t supplied with the light, it is compatible with other Knog mounts.

Knog PWR Mountain performance

Out on the trail the PWR Mountain has plenty of power to get you going on bridleways or gentle singletrack, with a very focussed spot light close to the front of the unit. This highly focussed beam does mean the light has plenty of close-range power that lights the trail well, within its confines.

The beam cut off is quite sharp and this highly focussed spot light is at the detriment of beam spread. Peripheral side-to-side vision is limited close to the rider, which makes it tricky to spot lines and obstacles to the sides of your trajectory or to see around corners if the trail is twisty. As soon as you’re turning your bars the light’s usefulness decreases quite rapidly.

It does project plenty of light forwards and up the trail though, and the LEDs' floodlight beam pattern seems to be mostly committed to lighting up what's directly in front of the rider.

Despite this, the light didn’t feel as powerful as the Ravemen PR 1600, which has 400 claimed lumens less, and the PWR Mountain’s beam does fade into the distance quicker than some other lights of a similar claimed power too.

The light emitted is quite white, which means it illuminates the trail well, giving good definition to obstacles and overcoming the darkness of the brown forest floor with ease. Unlike bluer lights, the white light is easier on the eyes.

The twist-to-change-mode function is easy to use when you’re stationary but as soon as the trail gets a bit bumpier it can be quite tough to properly operate. The battery indicator seems to be accurate and helps you manage how much time you’ve got left out on the bike.

Run time exceeded the claimed 2 hours in max, hitting 2 hours 50 minutes before it finally conked out.

Unfortunately, you can’t use the light’s battery pack function while a light head is attached because it covers the USB port. It also doesn’t appear possible to daisy chain batteries for a longer run time, but swapping a battery out is a doddle. If you’re on an epic ride then the light will run for as long as you can, if you’ve got enough battery packs.

The clamp is a stable mounting point for the light and once you’ve understood how it works is easy to use. The thumb wheel needs to be very tight to keep the light secure, though.

Knog PWR Mountain bottom line

As a standalone unit the Knog is perfectly suited to bridleway bashing or light singletrack but does struggle to illuminate techier trails with plenty of twists and turns, due to its sharp beam spread cut off.

Its design, operation and functionality is slick, and with a few extra accessories it could be a great helmet-mounted light to accompany a more powerful unit on the bars.

Because batteries are interchangeable and relatively small, its already long 2 hour 50 minute battery life can be extended for as long as your wallet permits, with batteries at £99.99 a pop.

How we tested

Testing lights objectively is a tough task. While it’s entirely possible to measure the number of lumens a light emits, there are a lot more variables that dictate how much of that light illuminates the trail. The colour of the light, its beam pattern and lens type have as much effect as the outright power.

With that in mind, we haven’t measured the number of lumens each light emits for this test. Instead, we’ve assessed how the light performs by describing the beam pattern, its colour and overall performance, while also measuring run time on the most powerful setting.