Outbound’s New “Detour” Road Light Brings Automotive Headlight Technology to Your Handlebars
This wireless light optimized for road bikers, commuters, and gravel grinders feature automotive-grade cutoff beam technology and is designed and assembled in-house in Chicago.
Detour is the latest handlebar-mounted bike light from Outbound Lighting. Developed by Outbound’s Chicago-based team of engineering professionals with experience in the automotive and LED lighting industries, Detour is explicitly designed for road riding, gravel riding, and commuting, bringing the power of automotive headlights together with an easy-to-use interface and durable package. The custom optic design packs a cutoff beam into a self-contained USB-C rechargeable package and is slim enough to fit in your pocket. Outbound Lighting’s Detour bike light retails for $179 and debuts in May 2022.
The precise horizontal cutoff beam is similar to car headlights that directs light where only you want it, preventing you from blinding oncoming pedestrians, fellow bikers, and drivers. The Detour’s smooth and progressive light field spans the entire width of the road from the front of your tire up to where you are looking.
“We use the same software and development techniques as major automotive OEMs to finely tune the optics for each product based on use case,” says Matt Conte, founder of Outbound and former automotive, optical engineer. “It’s literally automotive lighting tech on your bike, which allows us to put all the light where you can actually use it – on the road, rather than throwing light away into the sky. That means we can use less power to be brighter while achieving about 3 hours of strong output from a super-lightweight package.”
With a bolt-on clamp mount, Outbound’s lightweight Detour light locks solidly onto 35mm to 31.8mm handlebars to prevent bouncing, even when riding on gravel. The fiberglass-reinforced nylon mount uses a quick-release mechanism inspired by a camera tripod, removing the light with one hand for easy storage. Commuters can snap on and off and slide the light into their pocket without worrying about the mount developing play over time. Also available is an Action Camera-style mount that allows Detour to be slung underneath an outfront GPS mount while maintaining the QR mechanism.
The Detour has a super-simple user interface that doesn’t require complex button presses to understand, making it easy to navigate – even in the dark. Its soft-touch overmolded top shell has a single, large button right in the middle that’s easy to feel through a thick winter glove in the dark, with four green indicators to clearly convey mode and battery status without the need for a decoder. Daytime Strobe and Nighttime Pulse modes, each optimized for visibility without dazzling in different conditions, are available in addition to constant output modes. Still, you don’t have to cycle through them every time you want to change brightness.
High-quality components such as Cree XD16 LEDs and Samsung 21700 cells are coupled with a unique battery monitoring algorithm to give you accurate feedback without interruption, grafted into an industry-first thermally-conductive polymer housing that gets weight down below 150g – lighter than competing products despite having 40% more battery capacity. And if that’s not long enough, riders can extend runtime significantly by Pass-Thru Charging through the USB-C port via any external USB power bank for big rides and adventures.
About Outbound Lighting
Identifying as engineers first and bike riders second, Chicago-based Outbound Lighting’s engineering professionals have years of hands-on experience in the automotive and LED lighting industries and now chase optical illumination perfection for every ride. With a lineup of bike light products thoughtfully designed and assembled in-house in the United States in a new 7,200 sq ft facility, Outbound designs each product for each specific use case by shaping beam patterns through custom optics with Lucidshape™, the same simulation software used by major automotive manufacturers.
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