Midwest weather had a freak warm day last week (72 degrees in March!) so we ventured a short leg-stretching ride. This Varia 820 is an upgrade for me from the 515, and it IS as-advertised. I use it with an Edge 1040 and the new vehicle icons and wider display are far more useful, particularly in the kind of riding I do... out in the country, where a car/pickup can sneak up on you really really fast. The ONLY complaint I have so far has to do with the same, ongoing problem: the volume of the notification chime. Windy rides, at pace, you just can't hear the notification. You just have to get into the habit of the quick glance as part of your awareness "rotation." These will be gifts for my grandson and his father as well.
See the online YouTube reviews from Llama and DM for really good tech evaluations.
My old Garmin Varia was only holding a charge for around 3 hours. So, it was time to replace it. This tail light was just released. I've been happy with other Lezyne products and this was also about $50 less than the base Varia model and way less than the new Varia. I've now used it for about 2 weeks and I'm really happy with the performance of this product. The warnings are exactly the same as the old Varia. I've not had any false positives or false negatives. On top of all that, I got 14 hours of riding out of my first charge. That's about double what I ever got out of the Varia, even when it as new.
The only downside to this light is the way it attaches to your bike. It's just a rubber strap around your seat post. There's no way to attach it to a tab on a saddle bag or saddle rails. It's easy to move from bike to bike, but I wish there was more flexibility in where you can mount it.
Even with the lack of mounting options, I'm still very happy with this tail light.
This is the second one I've owned. The first one was lost after I got hit by a car last December. But it wasn't from lack of information this unit provides. It was from a car turning in front of me at a 4 way stop that 'didn't see me', even though I had bright colored clothes on and was half way through the intersection.
As I'm about to be released to ride again I wanted to make sure I still had this piece of equipment to use.
I love the extra information showing up on my Edge head unit of vehicles approaching from the rear and the rate of speed in which they are traveling. I can even tell when another cyclist is approaching to overtake me by the rate in which it's moving along the distance dots.
I have no problem hearing the tone alert of new vehicles approaching nor the display on my edge unit, which can be positioned on either side.
I cannot personally attest to the distance that the light carries, nor the flash rate it presents as I haven't followed it or others that I am aware of.
Overall great additional bit of info to have available for rear approaching objects, vehicles, other bicyclists, or maybe even dogs!
This is the second one I've owned. The first one was lost after I got hit by a car last December. But it wasn't from lack of information this unit provides. It was from a car turning in front of me at a 4 way stop that 'didn't see me', even though I had bright colored clothes on and was half way through the intersection.
As I'm about to be released to ride again I wanted to make sure I still had this piece of equipment to use.
I love the extra information showing up on my Edge head unit of vehicles approaching from the rear and the rate of speed in which they are traveling. I can even tell when another cyclist is approaching to overtake me by the rate in which it's moving along the distance dots.
I have no problem hearing the tone alert of new vehicles approaching nor the display on my edge unit, which can be positioned on either side.
I cannot personally attest to the distance that the light carries, nor the flash rate it presents as I haven't followed it or others that I am aware of.
Overall great additional bit of info to have available for rear approaching objects, vehicles, other bicyclists, or maybe even dogs!
