O-tus mini-speakers are just that: mini speakers. They attach to your helmet near your ears and, while they look a lot like earphones, they definitely do NOT go into your ear canal; they’re surround sound speakers and they project sound powerfully. It’s the speaker’s ability to project sound that makes these speakers work – you need it to project because the speakers are away from  your ears, and because they’re away from your ears, you can hear the traffic around you. A sensible solution indeed.

Of course, you also need something to play that music. If you have a light weight mp3 player, you can attach it to the back of your helmet and then connect it to your O-tus mini-speakers. If you have a smart phone, you can attach a bluetooth receiver to your helmet and then “beam” music to your O-tus mini-speakers via that, provided your phone has bluetooth, which most do. You can then leave your smart phone in your jersey pocket or mounted on your handlebars and still get music. So, in theory, O-tus have taken care of a problem for people who want that problem taken care of. The devil, of course, is always in the details.

I first became suspicious of this product when O-tus suggested I use a particular brand of mp3 player to test the mini-speakers. It was a brand I knew about, but one that I didn’t have (and no, it wasn’t a player from the orchard). I did a search for the mini-speakers online and discovered on the O-tus web site a video that showed you how to increase the volume of the songs on your iPod/iPhone so that you can listen to these devices properly on the mini-speakers. There was obviously a known issue with the mini-speakers, so now I definitely had to try using them with these devices. I don’t own any Apple products, but I do have a an ever increasing collection of cheap, but really good, mp3 players. I  borrowed an iPod nano and an iPhone to test the speakers out, but I mainly tested them using the mp3 players I had in my possession.

The previous paragraph makes it sound like there is something wrong with the mini-speakers. To save you some time wondering about this, there ultimately isn’t, but they do have a weakness and that is that they’re not “out-of-the-box” easily usable. You have to spend a little bit of time setting them up properly to make them work correctly. That’s the price you pay to get safe music, I suppose. If you want good music quality, use noise cancelling in-ear buds. If you want safe music, you’re going to have to work to get it sounding good. Essentially you can choose any two of the following: good, safe, easy.

Let’s look at the mini-speakers straight out of the box. The speakers, as previously mentioned, look like earbuds with some sort of velcro on the back of them and with only a short cord. You also get some sticky patches with velcro like material on one surface. This isn’t your normal hook and loop tape, rather it looks, and operates, like the love child of velcro and Lego. You push the two surfaces together a lot like Lego blocks, but they hold together like velcro. It’s not really that complicated; you stick a patch to the bottom edge of your helmet on each side, just in front of your ears, and you stick a patch on the back of your helmet and on the back of your mp3 player. You attach the mini-speakers to the mounting patches near your ears, run the cable to the back of your helmet, attach the player to the helmet and connect the mp3 player. All relatively simple to do, but this is where the fun begins.

When I first set the mini-speakers up (quickly, but as described in the instructions supplied with the mini-speakers), the music was barely audible. I fiddled around with it and, finally, I managed to get some quite good volume sound. The trick was to angle the speakers so that they “shot” the sound into my ear. Let me explain that a bit further.

The mini-speakers are built with a lip on them, a sort of funnel, with the big end on the speakers and the small end coming away from them.The funnel seems to focus the sound into a beam. That beam has to be positioned and angled so that it goes into the bowl of your ear, not past it. Once I worked that out, the speaker set up became obvious, but even then it was quite a delicate job to maximise the sound.

Once I had it, I proceeded to remove the speakers and try it again – they’re meant to be removable, after all. It was much easier now that I knew what to listen for and how the speakers were delivering the sound. I just imagined beams of light coming from the mini-speakers and made them “shine” into my ears. Yeah, I know it sounds fanciful, but it worked for me and each subsequent removal and re-attachment was aligned in less time.

After the alignment issue, I had to deal with the volume issue; I didn’t seem to have one. I am an avid mp3 listener, but because I often lose or damage my players, and because I don’t have the desire for social acceptance among the young and trendy, I am comfortable buying cheaper mp3 players. The chipsets in these devices are the same as the chipsets in more expensive ones, at least for sound quality, and a quick search on google will show you which cheap no-name device is equivalent in sound quality to which expensive player. Provided you don’t mind horrible user interfaces, you’re set. The two cheap players I used delivered good quality sound at a good volume. They were a Dolphin brand player and a Dick Smith brand player.

The sound quality through the mini-speakers using the cheap players was the equivalent of what you’d get from simple headphones or from ear buds that sit on the edge of your ear rather than go into the canal. When riding in traffic, you can hear the music as you would with simple headphones, that is: reasonably well most of the time, but almost not at all when there is traffic around. That’s fine for music, though if you were listening to an audiobook or some stand-up comedy, you would miss a lot of detail.

When listening to music, I had to have the volume up near maximum to get it audible. I don’t consider that to be a real problem; these mini-speakers require a lot of power to drive them and the players can only deliver so much. I couldn’t ramp up the volume to the point where the traffic noise was blocked out. I don’t think this is a feature of the mini-speakers, rather it’s a limitation, but one that’s beneficial.

The sound from the mini-speakers is also very directional. If you don’t have them pointed towards your ears, you will find it hard to hear anything from even a small distance away. I doubt someone riding next to me would stand a chance of hearing anything, even if we were riding in absolute silence without traffic. They’re very personal mini-speakers.

Apart from fiddling with the set up, the only other issue I have with the system is that the player is mounted on the rear of the helmet. This means that you have to turn the music on before you put your helmet on and then you don’t touch it again until you take your helmet off. There are probably some mp3 players that you can operate easily behind your head while riding, but really, it’s not an option. You have to make sure you choose a play list that you like, because you are going to have to stop and remove you helmet to change it.

Having the player mounted on the helmet also means that if it comes loose, your player is probably going to get damaged. This didn’t happen to me, and I have no reason to suspect it will, but it could happen. The velcro-like material does bond the speakers and mp3 player to the helmet quite strongly. Of course, you now have velcro-like pads stuck to your mp3 player and helmet, even when you’re not using the O-tus system.

So I’m happy to state that the mini-speakers work the way that they’re intended to work if they’re set up properly, with the players I tested at least. Given the player suggestions from O-tus and the video on their site, I had to test the mini-speakers with an Apple device. I borrowed an iPod nano and an iPhone to try them out, but I didn’t ride with these devices (they weren’t mine), I just compared the players in my office.

The mini-speakers with the iPod and iPhone did not perform well initially, but this didn’t surprise me. Apple are known for beginning-to-end product integration, so these players are designed to work with very specific output devices. The mini-speakers are not such devices. You either need some sort of amplifier or you need to increase the volume of the songs. The video on the O-tus site shows you how to do this in iTunes, but you can do it better and quicker in other music programs. Suitably amplified, the mini-speakers do work with the Apple devices I tried, but the sound quality of these amplified songs seems lower. I suspect it’s a side effect of the amplification process. While I didn’t ride in traffic with these devices, I think the sound quality would be sufficient for riding with and at least as good as that from the other cheap players I tried.

The other thing I didn’t try was using a bluetooth receiver. If I did have a smartphone, I wouldn’t be riding with it stuck to the back of my helmet and, given that smartphones can be used for navigation, displaying speed, and controlling your video cameras, I would prefer to have it mounted on my bars or stem. A bluetooth receiver would mean I could control the music from my bike’s cockpit, which is something I can’t do with the player mounted behind my hear. If the bluetooth receiver also had an amplifier built into it, then problem solved!

So, after all of that, here’s my verdict: these speakers are no good for blocking out the world around you and sailing away on an awesome guitar solo while riding. The moment you have a car or truck anywhere near you, you can hear it. That’s the point, you’re meant to hear the traffic while riding. Where the O-tus mini-speakers would be really good is in situations where there’s a bit of quiet. I’m thinking of Sunday rides along bike paths, long tours on quiet country roads, riding the streets at 4am to get to a group ride, and doing laps on the velodrome. Team the O-tus speakers up with an iPhone mount and a bluetooth receiver and you have a whole entertainment system on your bike.

If you really want music while you ride, the O-tus mini-speakers might be the option for you. They’re not as simple to set up and use as a set of earphones, but they do the job safely – provided you have a music player that will give you enough volume and/or you’re willing to modify your music. If you’re willing to go to the effort, you will reap the melodic benefits.

O-tus speakers come with enough mounting blocks to fit two helmets and are available from www.o-tus.com for $39.73 (shipping to Australia is between $6-8). Mounting blocks for tricky helmets are also available at no extra charge. The mini-speakers are available in black or white.

When you take the Blinder 4V out of its packaging it looks and feels like a well thought-out, well-designed little unit. Built from polycarbonate and aluminium, the Blinder 4V feels solid.  A lot of small lights feel too light or “plasticy” and the tabs or clips are prone to breaking.  The Blinder has an integrated rubber strap and steel clip that looks like it’ll grab onto nearly anything. Knog says that it suits 22-32mm diameter tubing and I found that the rounder the tube, the better the fit. For undersized or oversized tubes, or odd-shaped tubing, it is more difficult to get a fit, though the rubber strap still allows for more flexibility that many generic lights.  Knog are doing their bit for the environmental as well using fully recyclable packaging and enviro-friendly printing inks.

The Blinder 4V is, like many of Knog’s lights, a one-button affair; long-press on, short-press to cycle modes, long-press off again.  This button is at the back of the unit, towards the top and you have to stretch the strap a little to move the unit clear of the seat post to operate it. This means that turning it on or off, or changing the flashing sequence is a task best performed when you have stopped and not while riding.

We reviewed KNOG Blinder lights earlier this year which had the same USB charging function as the 4V. Once it’s off the bike, the USB plug flips out from behind the clip area.  Given the bulk of the light, it won’t fit all USB ports.  Low fixed ports could prove troublesome, as you have to turn the light upside down to insert it.  Using a short USB extender cable would solve any problems, but you may not always have one on hand.

There is an LED next to the switch to indicate charging, full, or low battery.  It is very small, so it’s probably worth checking every few trips to make sure it’s not in need of a charge.

The Blinder on the Road
For my first ride I mounted the blinder on a 27.2mm seat post and rode home at dusk.  It was obvious that this was a brighter, more visible rear light than my usual Superflash knock-off light. If you glance behind you can see the Blinder 4V lighting up your bike’s back wheel, parked cars and the road around you. This is a BRIGHT light.

My usual dusk/dark commute rear facing lighting consists of the Superflash knock-off light on the seat post, a single-LED blinky on the seat stay and a helmet-mounted LED blinky. When it’s very dark I run a 4-LED flashing light on my backpack, too.  I’ve had comments from other cycle commuters about the level of lighting being very effective.  Never have I felt under-lit.

On my first ride with the Blinder 4V I had a driver stop and say “Wow, that’s an effective light!” Knog note that the light has an inbuilt 15-degree mount angle which means that the light unit is angled to point directly behind rather than down towards the road (at the same angle as the seat tube).  In practice the angle of change is minimal, though it is a nice thought.  The light mounts such that it’s not pointing in driver’s eyes, however.  This is a light that could easily distract other road users if it was poorly mounted.

The light has 5 modes: solid, fast flash, organic flash 1 (‘heartbeat’), organic flash 2 and eco-flash.  I used it on fast flash and organic flash 1. The run time on for the eco-flash mode is claimed to be 50 hours, which is plausible given that it only fires two LEDs at a time.

The rubber strap seems a little counter-intuitive to install at first, being a ‘hook through and fold back around’ arrangement, but it felt solid.  Even so, I can’t help but think there was a small risk of catching baggy shorts on the clip and becoming unbuckled, though this didn’t happen during the time I was testing.  Should it undo on the run, there’s no safety net.  Given the length of the strap, the seat post or seat tube are the only options for mounting this light.  A low mounted saddle bag or short rise post may mean that this light won’t find a suitable mounting location on your bike, so ensure you have space first.

The Blinder 4V is small, light, and unobtrusive enough to be left in place all the time, though it also can be quickly removed, which is recommended if you leave your bike locked up in a public space. The waterproofing is rated at IP66 (dust sealed, strong jets of water with limited ingress), so it should stand up to being doused with water from your back wheel or a rain shower.

Consider buying the Blinder 4V if:

• You want compact brightness
• You want to swap lights between bikes often without removing mounts
• You want a less generic, better looking light

The KNOG Blinder 4V retails for $49.95 RRP and is available from KNOG online as well as in the many bicycle shops that carry this brand.

The Hornit is a battery powered warning device that mounts on your handlebars and is triggered via a pressure switch that you can mount close to your hand grips. On your bars it looks a lot like many front lights, which is to say it doesn’t look out of place on a recreational or commuter bike. It runs on 2 AAA batteries and weighs, all up, about 100g. The main unit is easily removable from the mount (well, easily with a little bit of practice) and is just as easily reattached. So, as far as commuter utility is concerned, the Hornit ticks all of the required boxes. I’m saying all of this about the Hornit to get the basics out of the way before I get down to what I really want to say: the Hornit is loud.

When I say the Hornit is loud, you really don’t get a good idea of what I’m talking about. If I put “loud” in all-caps, it would visually represent some sort of loudness, but still wouldn’t get the idea across. Likewise, if I told you that the Hornit’s loud mode is 140 dB and its soft mode is 130 dB, that would be just numbers. So what I’ll do is get you to imagine a car coming up behind you while you’re riding and giving you a blast on their horn. If you have ever ridden on the road, you’ll know what I mean. Now double that loudness. That’s loud, right? Good, now double it again. Wow! Pretty good, eh? That’s the Hornit’s soft mode and also the threshold of pain. Now double it yet again and you’ll have the Hornit in loud mode – 8 times louder than a normal car horn. The manufacturers claim it’s the loudest bike horn in the world and I’m not going to argue with that.

So, it’s loud. Very loud. Very, very, very loud. Very, very, very…well, you get the idea (it’s loud). But that’s not what you’re reading this for. You want to know if it works. I wondered the same thing, so to give it a fair trial on busy Sydney streets, I’ve used it on my commutes every day. I have also used it on some pedestrian populated shared user paths, which I normally avoid. Here are my findings:

The Hornit vs Pedestrians

As mentioned above, the Hornit is loud and it’s also quite directional. When you’re in front of the Hornit you’ll really hear it. What this means for you is that the pedestrians on the path ahead of you are going to hear you a long time before you’re near them (at least in theory). The Hornit operates in two modes (130 dB and 140 dB) and these modes have different sounds; the quiter mode is a single high pitch tone and the louder mode is a two tone twittering sound, sort of like a car alarm. I used both tones in a variety of circumstances and had some mixed results.

On the positive side, the Hornit is loud enough to be heard over personal music devices, telephone calls and conversations. On the negative side the sounds the Hornit make are not immediately associated with a cyclist coming up behind. Pedestrians are used to a lot of loud noises when they’re walking around, and everyone is used to car alarms going off. It’s been ingrained in people that bikes have bells or horns and that’s the sound they identify with, when they actually hear it. This isn’t to say the Hornit is not effective, you just have to be aware of how to use it.

A short single blast from the Hornit, in either mode, didn’t seem to make an impact on many pedestrians, but multiple short blasts, in either mode, seemed to make a difference. It’s really about creating something different in their heads as they’re walking/wandering and getting past the programming that immediately ignores loud alarm like sounds. A few short blasts does that since it’s not a “natural” suburban sound.

Obviously, if you snuck up behind a pedestrian and gave them a blast on the Hornit, they would “react”, probably right into your path. The benefit of the Hornit is that you can actually do it from a lot farther away than you can with a bell. It’s easy to tap out a little tune as well, since the push button for the Hornit can be placed right under your thumb and you don’t need to move your hands off the grips to use it.

 The Hornit vs Animals

One thing I noticed when using the Hornit is that dogs really don’t like it. A blast or two of the Hornit stopped a couple of annoying dogs in their tracks. They didn’t look like biters, but I’ve had my fair share of those in the past and I’d rather keep any sort of angry dog at bay. I know they’re only protecting their territory, but so am I.

By the way, cats don’t like it either. They really don’t like it. No, I didn’t meet any cats while out riding, but I do have some cats at home and while I didn’t deliberately chase after the cats (my wife wouldn’t let me), while I was showing the Hornit off to the kids the cats decided to bolt like there was a hell hound chasing them. The wife wasn’t impressed by the Hornit, but the kids loved it.

The Hornit vs Motorists

Pedestrians and dogs are one thing, cars are quite another. Bells and yells don’t always work against cars, where they almost always work against people and animals. I began my experiments against my wife in a stationary car. She had just dropped the kids off at school and I was heading out late to work. She had just parked the car and was looking through her bag when I rode up behind her and gave her a short blast of the Hornit on the soft mode. She was slow to look up, looked around and then noticed me. I was a bit dismayed by this and she said that it sounded like a car alarm, so she ignored it. Given that this was the first time I had used the Hornit against a car, I wasn’t impressed.

A few days later I had occasion to use it again against a car reversing out of a driveway. They stopped before they saw me, which made me feel safe and a little bit empowered. The Hornit this time was on loud mode, the twittering mode, and I gave it a good long blast. Later the same day I had a taxi turn across double white lines in front of me, attempting to do an illegal three point turn. I slowed, gave him three blasts on high mode and he stopped reversing while I was still a good distance away. I passed slowly behind him and gave him a death stare. A few cars had caught up to me and also passed behind the taxi, keeping him there for a while. Shame there weren’t any cops in the bunch.

I’ve used it several times in the way described above against motorists in a variety of circumstances, all to good effect. I also found it good for drowning out “conversations” such as “Keep off the r-TWEET-TWEET-TWEET. You’re a TWEET-TWEET”. So, the Hornit works, but it doesn’t give you the same sense of power that a car horn would. You can use it to identify yourself, to say that there’s something there that they didn’t see, but you really can’t use it to get rid of your frustration or express your annoyance. It’s too high and twittery to sound angry, but experience has shown me that it does work a lot better than a bell, and a whole lot better than nothing at all.

Sound like a good idea?

The Hornit is a very well designed warning device, but it’s not a horn or a bell and it’s not a sound that people immediately associate with a bicycle, whether that person is in a car or on foot. If you use it in repeated short bursts, it seems to get through to people that there’s something they should be looking at. Because it is so directional, people will know where it’s coming from when they do hear it and decide to look around.

As a commuter device, the Hornit is quite easy to use and has a few nifty features that show that it was designed by a commuter. The trigger switch on the Hornit is a great innovation. The button is attached to the handlebars via a Knog light style rubber band “thingy” which means it can be attached almost anywhere. It’s connected to the main unit via a wire and plug which you have to remember to plug in when you attach the Hornit, otherwise you’ll be pressing the button and nothing will happen (guess how I know this). If you frequently take the Hornit off the bike, as I do every time I lock it up, it doesn’t take long to incorporate the extra device into your routine.

The only thing I would change on the Hornit is the length of the trigger cable. As is, it’s fine for flat bars, but I ride drops and I would love to have the trigger near the hood where I can hit it without moving my hands from them. It took me a few days to work out a good position for the trigger, one that I wouldn’t hit accidentally while moving my hands around, but when I finally did find it the cable just wasn’t long enough. If I put it under the bar tape, it might just reach, but I want to be able to move it between bikes and a slightly longer cable would be a better option for me (that, or flat handlebars, and that’s not happening). I think I’ll just add a bit to the cable myself, since I really like the trigger idea. In fact, I would love to have something like this to control my lights and enable me to switch modes.

The inventor of the Hornit was inspired to create it after experiencing London traffic. According to the company, it works in London. I’ll confirm here that it works in Sydney, at least as well as anything else does. The Hornit is functional and sturdy and it certainly lives up to its promise of being loud. While it’s not going to make everyone on the road or path aware of you, it’s certainly better than a bell or a yell in many situations.

I typically wear hi-vis clothing when I ride and when it gets dark, along with my lights, I also throw on a safety vest with lots of reflective material on it. I’m always brightly coloured and I try to ride visibly and predictably. Obviously, all of these things won’t save me if I get hit, but each one of them gives me that extra little bit of presence that will hopefully keep me safe on the roads. The Hornit means that I can ride both big and loud.

The Hornit is imported by Cassons (enquiries@cassons.com.au) and available through all good bike stores.