My favorite feature is knowing when a car is NOT behind me.
That opens up the entire lane (or two) and that has totally changed how I ride on my local crappy roads. I ride wherever the smoothest pavement is then move over when the Varia goes off.
13 Likes
yes, its a big deal here, due to the loud wind, crappy roads, and higher speeds when doing intervals with a tailwind. Wrote about it here with some pics:
^^^ last night I was on that same road (pictured in that post), riding on the crown, sitting upright & eating, completely non-aero, on my gravel bike. Couldnāt get less aero.
riding 23+mph / 37kph tailwind assisted in non-aero position. Its about 15 minutes back into town at those speeds, floating across the crappy broken potholed pavement on 48mm measured S-Works Pathfinders. Brutal headwind on the outbound - endurance pace at 13mph / 21kph in full aero position 
A beautiful WindWarrior kind of day 
Love love love having a radar.
1 Like
Sort of? The Varia with camera has USB C port. got a couple of 18650 batteries and a case:
Toss the battery in my seat bag and plenty of power.
2 Likes
Can your ears hear a car approaching from +150m away, when you also have wind noise going on?
6 Likes
Iāve tested this light quite a bit. Itās more or less a Flare RT with a modified Varia system attached. It has more battery than a Varia but the ability to see cars earlier takes more power. That means I was able to kill the battery after roughly 9 hours and 20 minutes of riding. Advantages compared to Varia are USB-C charging, earlier detection, and the visible battery life indicator on the side. Disadvantages are the decreased battery life and a mount I actually like less than the Garmin mount.
4 Likes
There are many obvious situations where you canāt hear a car approaching, wind noise, electric vehicles, electric motorcycles, wind noise on descents etc etc.
1 Like
It depends on whether you are driving a car, or standing beside/behind the guy with the blinking light.
I had an āexperienceā on a strange road on a āgroup rideā where I was dropped cold on a wicked and fairly well traveled straight away. My varia was alerting me to an object at the beginning of its range, so I figured it turned off, possibly. Then it popped back on the alert, and was coming at a āhigh rate of speedā, said the little line on the right of my Edge. Being a new road, to me, I was paying attention to the area on the asphalt I was riding in and when it got closer, turned as much as I dared to see what the hell was coming up on me. All I could see was a really tall black (and chrome) thing that was still approaching at a rather high rate of speed. My thoughts were 'Well, itās been an interesting life, and, well, could be soon to end, or itāll be another local brush, and/or objects thrown at me. Well, this āthingā pulled up next to me at an intersection, and the window rolls down to an incredulous occupant in awe of the brightness of my bike light, and complimenting me on it. (I was about to think I was either road kill, or about to need clean bibs, but could do nothing more than stare at the driver looking like I was an idiot about to drool on myself.
I do remember thanking him for noticing my light, and satisfied, he roared off. I finally recollected my senses and got angry! āYOU PRICK!! YOU CARIST NUT JOB!! YOU SELF-CENTERED WHATEVER!! YOU SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME!!ā I was riding a standard gen 2 varia, and lived to tell the story, and never did THAT road again.
Yeah, I have the Trek Flare lights, and have gotten comments from driver on those too. One guy, all I could say was āThanks for seeing it and not running me over!ā.
At some point, a light will or wonāt save your life. You could have the lights they put on a Airbus 380 front landing gear, and a self absorbed tween on a fight with an unknown foreign troll will still run you down, but the scorched paint on their car will show that they SHOULD have seen it.
having a light is far better than not having one. I am all for smart lights, in the rear. Of the bike. I wish the varia was brighter, but itās far better than nothing. Technology that works is so awesome!
Now, if the Flareās charged quicker and lasted longer. I was using one with my varia, but have backed down and just used the varia. It seems good enough. Iām still aliveā¦
Not necessarily āmore powerā, but a better sensor and better designed optics. Both being bad words for a huge corporation trying to, no irony here, trying to āmake a killingā on a bike tail light.
I have never gotten > 9 hours out of my Varia, how much are you getting out of yours?
1 Like
In day flash mode itāll do 16 hours according to the spec. Iāve had it last for more than 24 hours by turning off the light during the day but keeping the radar on.
2 Likes
I live in one of the windier parts of England and have never found it to be a barrier to my awareness of approaching traffic.
With EVs, as with most vehicles, the road noise provides ample warning of their approach.
And 150m plus? What benefits are there beyond, say, 50m? (I assume that most cycling is done in 50mph limits or less.)
Iāve been retired for a few years now and my hearing is getting worse, so I guess that eventually things will change and your points may become valid for me. So, a good tool for those with auditory impairment.
What I havenāt heard, and what would be of value, is a radar that identifies a close pass before it occurs. Now that really would be a game changer.
On Peloton mode I got about 9 hour + for about a years but itāll die around 5-6 now of riding straight and give me warnings on group rides where thats the elapsed time.
1 Like
Read through the linked to thread ( Garmin Varia users - need feedback - Equipment - TrainerRoad), it dives deep into the benefits, and its really something you have to try before you realise actually its very good before a lot of people me included are nay sayers why do I need to buy a Ā£130-160 light for something I can do for free (ears and shoulder checks). The varia alerts you to the presence of a car/driver and stops that wtf moment as they whizz by and by interpreting the lights you can guess what type of pass it will be (when it goes red to orange, you kinda know theyāve saw you). The change in light patterns tend to convince drivers not to close pass anyway and thereās many other benefits as the linked to thread suggests. I very rarely get close passes anymore thankfully. But the TREK is supposed to identify the position in lane of the driver behind so it would affirmatively identify a close pass.
5 Likes
The Varia will show you the speed at which a car is closing. Both by the visible dot on your screen and also by going red instead of amber if the car is closing very quickly. Iāve found these indicators along with scanning the road in front of me to be extremely useful in anticipating a likely close pass. E.g. If my screen has gone red, thereās a car closing on me at a rate of knots, and I can see thereās traffic coming the other way and not much space to pass, or an island in the middle of the road that restricts the width, then either the car is going to perform a close pass or slam the brakes on late, and I can start to act accordingly. Forewarned is forearmed.
You can also see on the screen if thereās multiple cars, which can exacerbate the likeliness of a close pass as the first car might be aware of you but judges if they keep their speed up they can just about pass you safely and then pull back in before the island/traffic, but the car behind quite likely isnāt even aware there is a cyclist and hasnāt anticipated the suddenly closing distance and narrowing road space.
As others have said, itās hard to appreciate just how useful the Varia is until youāve actually experienced it!
8 Likes
- Ha, not where I live. Open country roads that I ride are 60-70mph posted limit and many consider those a honkable offense to drive that slow.
- I need to rewatch the Trek video, but I thought it claimed to be able to give some level of lane location info on screen.
ETA: Only with their phone app.
2 Likes
They did claim to be able to show the lane of the oncoming car. Including this feature is likely why the Trek unit is wider than the Garmin. If it reliably works, this would be a nice feature. If it only works some of the time, itās pretty much useless.
3 Likes
Lane position is shown on the Trek phone app.
2 Likes
To me this is useless because
a) where I ride there are no two lane roads where cyclists are allowed (that I know of)
b) I donāt have my phone mounted to my handlebars
I hope Trek comes out with a ālightā version of what they have here more in the vein of the Garmin Varia in shape, but with their powerful ION RT light, USB-C charging and battery indicator on the side.
1 Like
Im not sure how itāll work, whether or not its sensitive enough to say if a car in your one lane is passing far enough out to give you space or not. If it cant give that info or it only gives that info on the phone app (like you I donāt mount my phone to the bars), I cant see it being much benefit to me over the more streamlined Varia either.
2 Likes
In my mind the game changer would be a live video view of whatās behind me. Make the bike computer an electronic rear view mirror, like what is available on some cars. Depending on price I might upgrade for that.
4 Likes