This is a review of Antfire Bike Tail Lights, which I bought as turn signals to use on my Urban Arrow Family bike.

The blinkers in their box
The blinkers on the Urban Arrow
The blinker controls installed on the handlebars

I picked this one because it seemed like the best set of blinkers that had both front and back blinkers. I have an Urban Arrow cargo bike (huge bike), and I’ve been riding it in the winter, so I have a set of WOBS bike gloves to keep my hands warm. I don’t like taking my hands in and out of these things while biking and turning, so I don’t want to use my hands for signaling.

Pros:

  • There are both front and back blinkers.
  • Pairing and set-up is very easy.
  • I like that the “blinker is on” sound is a slightly different pitch depending on whether it’s the left or right blinker that’s on. My bike mitts obscure the LED, and the different pitches help me figure out the state the blinkers are in. I haven’t yet perfectly associated one sound with left and one sound with right, but I can tell when I accidentally pressed right when I meant to turn the left blinker off, which is a help.
  • It’s not terribly difficult to operate these by feel (not the best, but not the worst either)
  • There are two options for how to mount on the bike — I am still planning to 3D print a better customized mount in the rear, but for now the small mounts work on my front forks, and the large mount works for one side of my rear rack mount.
  • I like that it comes with a 4-prong charger for the 4 indicators, though I wish that it were a 5-prong charger, since I also need to charge the control unit.

Cons:

  • The “blinker is on” sound is simply not loud enough when muffled by bike mitts and wind and traffic sounds. Since the bike mitts obscure the LED that says which direction is on, and any gloves I might be wearing dull my sense of touch, I am really reliant on the sound to tell if I’ve successfully turned on the blinker or not. A lot of times I either can’t hear it or I think my blinker is on because of some small breeze running through my helmet or something. A much louder sound, a more low-pitched sound or possibly just a different sound altogether would really help with this (though if it were really loud I think most people would want a way to turn it off).
  • It’s not amazingly easy to notice that the batteries in the blinkers have died. The controller will still be blinking and making noise, but the blinkers themselves will just fail to activate. This feels kinda dangerous, since I think I’m signalling but I’m not! I don’t know if a good solution for this.
  • The indicator batteries can be dead enough that they don’t blink, but holding down the power button to put them into pairing mode will still work. This is a very confusing state of affairs.
  • The clips on the mounts get brittle pretty quickly in cold weather. I snapped off at least two of them on the first cold day that I mounted my blinkers in. Luckily, the grooves that they fit in to are a decently tight fit, so the clips aren’t that important for stability.

Neutral:

  • The battery life seems OK. I had the blinkers on the bike for about 3-4 weeks before they started dying, and they recharged in an hour or so.

Overall, I’d probably buy something different if there were something different at a similar price point that were better than this, but I am not sure I’ve seen anything like that, and this is better than signalling by hand, using a solution with only rear or front blinkers or using a system that requires separately actuating the front and back blinkers.