Ravemen FR160 Pro front light review

The Ravemen FR160 front bike light is designed to offer essential visibility in gloomy conditions, while saving handlebar space.

The integration is slick and secure, and will appeal to those who either don’t need a light to see by, or wish to combine it with one.

It’s useful, but it’s a shame users of Wahoo mounts and computers will need to buy replacement parts at extra cost for it to work with their setup.

Ravemen FR160 Pro details and specifications

The Ravemen FR160 Pro is a front safety light, which mounts onto your existing Garmin or Wahoo mount.

On top of the light unit, there’s a recess for your bike computer to mount, effectively replacing the one you’ve taken up with the FR160 Pro.

Garmin-compatible parts (the recess above and the mount underneath) are supplied by Ravemen, but Wahoo-compatible alternatives must be bought separately.

This ‘Pro’ version uses an alloy mount to fit to the mount of your Garmin bike computer. The standard FR160 uses a plastic one.

The front ‘array’ is powered by COB (chip-on-board) LEDs, with a translucent lens. The array wraps around the corners of the unit to offer side-on visibility.

The FR160 is charged using a USB-C port, with a cable supplied. It switches on and off, and cycles through modes, using a single button next to it on the rear. Functionality doesn’t get much simpler.

There are three static modes (high, mid and low, producing 50, 25 and 10 lumens, respectively) and three flashing modes.

The ‘warning flash’ is the most powerful, with a dull backlight interspersed with a strobing flash at 160 lumens. A 25-lumen fast flash and a 50-lumen slow flash mode complete the picture.

Ravemen says you can expect up to 13.5 hours of burn time, but that drops to 4 hours for the most power-hungry high static mode and 5.3 hours (yes, that’s exactly how Ravemen describes it) for the warning flash mode.

The light carries an IPX6 ingress protection rating, which means it’s protected against 'jets of water' but can withstand some ingress without bother.

The Ravemen FR160 Pro costs £44.99 / $36.95.

Ravemen FR160 Pro performance

As a bike light to help you be seen, the Ravemen FR160 Pro is a neat unit that performs well given its size.

Battery life is never going to be especially long in a unit this small (and light, at 55g), but I saw run times that largely tallied with Ravemen’s predictions.

I achieved around 5 hours for the warning flash, accumulated over a few commutes and rides, and 4 hours 2 minutes when I let the battery discharge from full on the high static mode.

I preferred to use the warning flash mode at all times to maximise my confidence in being seen.

Although the 50-lumen modes offer substantially improved visibility over nothing at all, it’s the 160-lumen warning flash setting that punches through the gloom (and against competing car headlights). For me, the other modes felt almost redundant.

It’s worth noting, though, that in brighter, sunnier daylight, a fundamentally more powerful front light will be more effective at drawing attention to you.

On such days, I didn’t bother with the FR160 Pro, preferring instead to use a Lezyne Micro Drive Pro 1000+, which I mounted under my out-front mount with a GoPro adaptor. Of course, nothing’s stopping you leaving it in place as a backup.

I like how the FR160 is almost completely obscured by a Garmin Edge computer on top of it. I’ve used a small Edge 520 Plus to illustrate the point, although this also highlights that the function button is slightly obscured with the head unit fitted.

Everything attached together reassuringly firmly, albeit almost too tightly when I attempted to fit it to the Roval out-front mount supplied with my test Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8.

The setup also looks sleek, adding only a small amount of ‘stack’ to the out-front arrangement.

As a Garmin user, I’m unaffected by Ravemen’s decision to not bundle in alternative Wahoo parts.

However, if the boot were on the other foot, I’d find that an annoyance, and would be tempted to look at another solution than fuss around buying the extra parts.

Given that Fabric supplies its similar Lumaray front light with a replacement plate to fit certain Wahoo computers on top, a precedent has been set.

Ravemen FR160 bottom line

The Ravemen FR160 offers neat integration of an essential light source to help you be seen.

I like the svelte application of the unit and found its most powerful mode to be effective in all but the brightest of sunlight – where a light with a punchier day flash mode is warranted.

As long as you’re using a Garmin setup, or are willing to spend extra on the necessary parts to make it work with your Wahoo computer, it works well as an attention-seeking blinker or small emergency backup.