[Customer Review ] Olight RN 1500 Review

If you are anything like me you like to go Mountain Biking, or Cycling, as regularly as you can, because it is a fun and easy way to keep ft, and to get outside. A gym membership is a fine way of getng ft too, but for the price of a one-yeargym membership you can get a decent bike that will last well over a decade, and you don’t have to wait for that other guy to get of the machine so you can use it. But again, if you are anything like me, you have a busy work life and schedule which means that you can’t always get out in the daylight.Sometmes by the tme you have goten everything done for the day that you need to doit is getng dark, or already is dark. This is where the Olight RN-1500 bike light is a reallife-saver.

Image 1: Package box.

Like other Olight products the RN 1500 comes in a sturdy and strong box that will make sure that your product comes to youin good conditon. There arenot many things more annoying than ordering something online and then uponopeningit you fnd that it is damaged or already partally opened. I had this happen twice recently with diferent products from other companies. In one situatona box came that had torn open before it had even reached my door. The other situaton was a book I had ordered and the package it came in was wet. It had not been sitng outside my house at all, because the delivery man handed it straight to me, but somehow it had goten wet in transit. Luckily both items had minimal damage, but this is stll annoying. When you purchase an Olight product you are not buying something cheap, you are spending your hard-earnedcashon something that is a qualityproduct, and you want to know that the product you are buying will come safely, and with their packaging you can be assured of that. Look at the padding inside the box:

Image 2: Inside package box.

You can be certain that your premium light will come in premium conditon because of the premium packaging designed to keep it in good condition.

When you open it up you will fnd in the packthe bike lightitself, a handlebarmount for your mountain bike or road bicycle, a GoPro mount as well, a high quality charging cable (which really does mater), an Allen key and some spare bands for the mount. Don’t just gloss over these bands either. When I went to put the mount on my mountain bike,I got a bit frustrated because I could not get the mount to ft. It is not a rubber device like some of the other ones you can buyso it does not stretch. This is a diferent stylethat allows you connect to your mount to the handlebarby tghtening it with an Allen key, so it is designed to be secure. Afer trying to get it on, I looked again in the box and realized all of the spare bands are a few diferent sizes. And then it clicked, I just needed the right size band. Once I had the right size band it ft on my mountain bike perfectly.

Image 3: What’s in the Box?

Another plus of this mountng bracket design is that once you have it tghtened the RN 1500 will stay in placeon your handlebars, it does not move around. I have a cheaper rubber strap style bike lightas well, and it was frustratng to use while mountain biking because the light would not stop movingaround. It would move forwards or backwards and I would be constantly adjustng itso I could see on the tracks. With this design from Olight you do not have to worry about that at all. With my older bikelight,the rubber strap wraps aroundthe mount, and you need to click the light onto it. The problem with that design is that the clip is not secure. So,I got home one day afer an afernoon ride, I had been riding in the daylight, and I notced that my bike light was gone. It had dropped ofon the ride somewhere. How annoying is that? I just fgured it was lost, but then I went for another ride a couple of days later in the same place and I found it on lying the ground. I took a photo of where I found the light sitng on the ground.

Image 4: I found the light right in front of where my tyre is.

You’ll see in the image that my RN 1500light is on my mountain bike,and it has stayed on since I got it, except when I take it of to charge it. The lightconnectonis very solid, it does not move, it just stays on the handlebars at the angle I tghtened it on at, which is brilliant. I cannot stress how useful that it is. When you are riding through a bush track at dusk or nightme, you do not want to have to worry about readjustng your lightconstantly, because if you lose concentraton that can be very dangerous.

Of course, you also want to make sure that you have the amount of light that youneed, a dull light is no good, especially on a dirt track. The RN 1500 has you covered here. The light is incredibly bright. It has a max output of 1500 lumens, and in powered by an internal 5000mAh batery that gives you plenty of batery life. So,it is bright and it does last quite a while as well.

In the next picture you will see a comparison picture of the light on it brightest setng verses its lowestsetng:

Image 5: Lef is lowest setng, right is brightest setng.

When I took this photo it was late dusk, so it was not fully night yet, but look at the diference the light is making to my path. On either setng the RN 1500 is incredibly good at lightng up the path. This track here is partcularly treacherous, because it has lots of loose rocks, so I needto make sure I have a good light. With my old bike light I would not even try to ride these tracks at night, but with the RN 1500 it was no problem at all.

This is a fantastc bike light and at $114.95 it is reasonably priced too. Sure, you can buy a cheaper light for $30 to $50 that will be serviceable in some setngs. But you are not going to get something of this build quality, that stays in positon frmly on your bike, that is not going to let you down in any setng. For that you need something like the RN 1500. Even if it is raining this light is IPx7 waterproof, so you don’t have to worry about rain at all. You can drop this in a puddle and it won’t get wrecked. Though I don’t know how you could drop it because the mount is so secure. I cannot recommend this light highly enough. Forget the cheap low quality optons, get this light.

[Customer Review ] Olight RN 1500 Bike Light Review written By Matt