Bryton Gardia R300 Radar Light

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Treptay
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:23 am

by Treptay

Bryton revealed their version of the radar light on eurobike this summer, but have been quiet about it for the most time.
Doing a google search, I stumbled across this:
https://www.ciclopromo.com/news/gardia- ... 1b2bdb1101

And on the bryton catalog (page 20), there is a spec sheet with overview:
https://www.ciclopromo.com/catalogo/Bryton/20/

I also found the app on the apple app store https://apps.apple.com/vn/app/bryton-ga ... 54612?uo=2

So from this I assume the global launch is going to happen really soon, not sure why the Italians are the only ones talking about it (there are a few other italian websites that wrote articles about it in the last day).

Specs:
66 grams
Radar range up to 150 meters
Braking indicator (accelerometer, I assume similar to the magene light)
8-17 hour battery (that would be great if true)
220 degree light cone of view (I saw no info about the radar detection cone)
USB-C, ant+, bluetooth, ipx7 water resistant
Comes with its own mount, that uses the brtyon style gps mount, which you can insert into a garmin(varia) mount, but it is rotated by 90 degrees.

Has anyone got any other info? I am torn between this and the Magene radar light, but I will wait for other reviews (DC and Lama) to make the decision.

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mag
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by mag

It's been pretty quiet since the initial (and already quite silent) reveal at Eurobike. It was supposed to be released by the end of the summer, but nothing happened. Then I found some (Italian) short preview at Youtube where the author claimed that it's going to be released by the end of the year.

Now it seems to be available at some Italian shops, for example today I found it at https://evolutionbikes.it/en/luce-poste ... rdia-r300/ where they claim to have it in stock and currently even offer a 10% discount for it so it's pretty tempting.

By the way if you search for it at Youtube, you'll find several recent Italian videos about it, like unboxing and some short previews. So it seems like in Italy it's really on the market, but strangely not much anywhere else.

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gplama
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by gplama

I've reached out to Bryton again to see if I can get a hold of one for a review.

otnemem
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by otnemem

Garmin basically destroyed the market for Magene and Bryton by pre-emptively bringing the price for the RTL515 down to 150€. Even less if you get it in a bundle with the Edge 530/830.

mag
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by mag

I had some hopes for a different (more compact) form factor, but all these new alternatives are pretty much the same.

One tricky thing about the Bryton is that even though it uses the Garmin-type mount, the interface is rotated by 90° so any 3rd party mounts (that currently exist for Varia) would position it incorrectly.

Treptay
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:23 am

by Treptay

I bought the light from an Italian web shop, it arrived a few days ago. Here are the weights, I will test it when it stops raining ( in a few days).
So far it paried without any problems with my wahoo elmnt bolt.
Image
Image
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The specified weight was 66g, so 69g is close enough (105g with mount and aero seatpost adapter).
When using the android app, the app states about 8 hours of use on full constant brightness.
I will try to test the battery life while riding, since the light has a 5 minute auto off feature, since it has a accelerometer to detect if it's moving (also used for brake light function)
So far the build quality seems good.
Also it came with a small USB-C cable.

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gplama
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by gplama

I picked one up from All4Cycling. Arrived today. Difficult to test the battery life on the bench with the auto-off. The manual states it won't auto shut off if it's paired to the app or a bike computer.... it still goes to sleep with no movement. It also doesn't return to previous light state. The light defaults to 'off' when waking back up. Not ideal.

The listed FCC ID YDM-DE2201 doesn't pull up anything on the FCC website...

cinra
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2019 2:07 am

by cinra

gplama wrote:
Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:02 am
I picked one up from All4Cycling. Arrived today. Difficult to test the battery life on the bench with the auto-off. The manual states it won't auto shut off if it's paired to the app or a bike computer.... it still goes to sleep with no movement. It also doesn't return to previous light state. The light defaults to 'off' when waking back up. Not ideal.
I'm been contemplating on importing this as well. All the current reviews arent that great yet, I'd like to see how it fares with multiple cars behind you. I hope it isnt like Magene where it only blinks/flashes for the lead car and totally ignores the tailing car and will just flash again once after those cars clears its field of detection.

mag
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by mag

Is the software updatable? If so, some of those annoyances and shortcomings could be still ironed out.

Treptay
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Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:23 am

by Treptay

gplama wrote:
Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:02 am
I picked one up from All4Cycling. Arrived today. Difficult to test the battery life on the bench with the auto-off. The manual states it won't auto shut off if it's paired to the app or a bike computer.... it still goes to sleep with no movement. It also doesn't return to previous light state. The light defaults to 'off' when waking back up. Not ideal.

The listed FCC ID YDM-DE2201 doesn't pull up anything on the FCC website...
I also bought it from All4Cycling, don't know why they are one of the few that actually sell it.
Well, after your post, I tried it on my table, connected to my wahoo, and it worked for at least 30 min (without turning off), but it was late and I wasn't gonna test it overnight.
Initial testing showed 4-5% battery loss per 20 Minutes (so projected battery life between 6.5-8.3 hours) with highest brightness (constant light).

Did a ride yesterday, about 2-5 degrees celsius outside. The light was turned on, and was in constant light mode (highest brighntess) for about 3 hours and 20 minutes.
After the ride, I opened the app and it showed 64% battery left. That would mean a battery life of about 10 hours, but the manual states 8 hours max in that mode??
I assume a few things happened.
First, every time it detects a car, it goes into flashing mode for a few seconds, that would mean it uses slightly less battery for the light.
Secondly, it maybe is possble that it bumped into my saddle bag and switched the mode to 50% brigthness. ( I doubt it)
Third thing is, the andorid app is kinda a mess. But after the ride it got a firmware update (previous firmware was 0.7.6 or something like that), and I updated it to 0.8.6. Well, after the update, the app showed 71% battery. HOW. I think either the light reports the battery levels bad, or the app showes the wrong ones, but something is off.

I never had a radar light before, so I don't know how the garmin and magene performance.
The bryton detected (what I feel like) all cars behind me, but the distance of detection was mostly around (my approximation) 40 meters. Some were detected at maybe 30 (but I cannot guaraante they didn't pull out of a driveway), and the longest detection was maybe 70-80 meters. The ride had some long road sections, so I don't think that it is able to achieve a detection range of 150 meters - maybe on a truck, but not a car. I also detected a train once, that was on the rails, maybe 15-20 meters to the left of the road (and I drive on the right side), so it can detect objects that are not directly behind you.
After I stopped before my appartment building, I stayed on the side of the road, had a long stretch, tried to point the back of my bike to look perfectly behind. It detected cars at approx 40 meters away, and a tram... at 30 meters. I don't know why it performed so badly on the tram, maybe because the front of it is 50% glass?
I did not have a false positive while riding, except for once when it detected my riding partner behind me. But if I was stationary, it would randomly detect people or something as "cars". Not a big deal for me, since I don't care about the performance while standing still. (That was at a isolated bike path without cars)
I also got the "holy shit something is coming really fast behind you" beep, so that also works.
I did not have a situation where it detected two cars at once, but that would be hard yesterday, since on long staritght roads they would occlude eachother and the traffic amount was kinda low.

Summarised: detects cars further than my hearing range, so it is better than not having a radar light, but detection range doesn't seem to be the best.
Also I have a small bike frame, so it isn't mounted particulary high. It looks like it isn't occluded by the back wheel.
I will try to do a few more rides next week, if the temperatures don't go bellow freezing. If you want anything specific to be tested, please say.

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gplama
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by gplama

cinra wrote:
Sun Feb 05, 2023 4:18 am
I'm been contemplating on importing this as well. All the current reviews arent that great yet, I'd like to see how it fares with multiple cars behind you. I hope it isnt like Magene where it only blinks/flashes for the lead car and totally ignores the tailing car and will just flash again once after those cars clears its field of detection.
I'm about 1/2 way into my testing/review. I've had to rig up an interesting way to test the battery life as the sleep mode is kicking in if I leave it on the bench (and there's no option to turn off sleep mode). Battery life with full solid was around 6hrs30mins. Peloton mode (low solid) was around 13hrs... I'll put the specifics in the video.

The detection range does NOT appear to be 150m. It's 140m at max... same as the other ANT+ Radar units. It's doing something strange with single cars and splitting them into two objects that's screwing with MyBikeRadarTraffic (counts cars and records speeds).

Their companion app for alerts via your phone/headphones works... however the sound/chimes are terrible. We have devices capable of Dolby Atmos and they choose some 8-bit BEZZZZRRT... and ting-a-ling for the all-clear tone, which is inaudible in a lot of scenarios out on the open road. I appreciate the tones have to be simple. I just don't like them being shitty. 🤣

There's also been a few false positives. Not uncommon for these devices. No false negatives, which is good. Multiple car detection is fine with it. (I have a nice three car pass for my review video to show).

I'll aim for the end of the week to get a review video up. At this point it's a 6/10 from me. Needs a few refinements and a number of enhancements to the app to get more points in my book.

pushpush
Posts: 291
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:10 am

by pushpush

I was a late adopter of the Varia radar unit. I hate leaving home without it now. I have some complaints about it, but IT WORKS reliably. The thing about the radar sensor is you gradually learn to trust it and use it like an extra sense.

There are a lot of ways to save $100 dollars, but as a pretty critical piece of safety equipment, I'm not sure this is the best place to do it.

YMMV of course. For me, the cost of an extra tire is well worth getting a known reliable radar unit.

RDY
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Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:31 pm

by RDY

IMO a radar unit combined with left (right if JP / UK) drop bar plug mirror (the one from the French company I can't remember is good-ish) is the best way to go. Radar to alart you and mirror to check.

otnemem
Posts: 398
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2019 7:55 am

by otnemem

pushpush wrote:
Wed Feb 08, 2023 8:05 am
I was a late adopter of the Varia radar unit. I hate leaving home without it now. I have some complaints about it, but IT WORKS reliably. The thing about the radar sensor is you gradually learn to trust it and use it like an extra sense.

There are a lot of ways to save $100 dollars, but as a pretty critical piece of safety equipment, I'm not sure this is the best place to do it.

YMMV of course. For me, the cost of an extra tire is well worth getting a known reliable radar unit.
Definitely, this.
Probably even less of a price difference if you shop around. The RTL515 was at 150€ until recently and there's bundle deals if you're in the market for an Edge 530/830.

miOdiO
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Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:54 pm

by miOdiO

gplama wrote:
Mon Feb 06, 2023 10:49 am
I'll aim for the end of the week to get a review video up. At this point it's a 6/10 from me. Needs a few refinements and a number of enhancements to the app to get more points in my book.
Any update on this? I want to get a radar for this season and would love to see a comparison between Garmin Varia, Magene L508 and Bryton Gardia.
Varia has proven to work for years.
Bryton has some features that might be nice (USB-C & integrated break light).
But at the end what counts for me is reliability and battery life.

by Weenie


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