Coospo TR70 Smart Radar Tail Light – Cycling News | Bike Reviews

Whichever way you cut it, the £100 Coospo TR70 Smart Radar Tail Light is an excellent device. It matches the best in radar performance, and beats the competition in other key areas. It’s a really impressive bit of kit which also happens to be priced very competitively. I can’t really find any weaknesses in this product, so put it high up – or on top of – any list of radar/lights that you’re considering.

Up to now, the gold standard for radar/lights has been the Garmin Varia series. I have an RCT715 unit (with the camera) which is otherwise the same as the RTL515 with regard to radar and light output – their differences are down to weight, USB plug types and battery life. However for the purposes of comparison, I will talk about the RTL515 as it is closer to the TR70 as a direct competitor.

Radar

As a radar, the TR70 is excellent. It is a very reliable, accurate and dependable provider of information. It detects cars at pretty much the same time as the Garmin, with the alert beeps going off at the same time in a side by side static test.

The TR70 can display up to eight vehicles at a time, according to Coospo, and I saw four and five displayed regularly. The only difference that I could see was that the TR70 shows a car for slightly longer on the display screen as it overtakes you.

Often, when testing a new radar, I spend a lot of the ride comparing its behaviour to the Garmin, and wondering why, how and where it’s different. With the TR70, I fitted it and just rode – by which I mean it told me what was happening in broadly the same way as the Garmin. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I can hear a car, why have I not been alerted?’ or ‘Only one car is showing, why are two overtaking me?’ It told me what I heard and observed, and in a similar way to what I’m used to.

Light

The Coospo TR70 has seven light modes. Two of these modes provide solid light, the next four are flashing, and the seventh is a radar only mode where it flashes whenever a car approaches.

Most of the modes are 20 lumen outputs. Notable exceptions are the Low Solid mode, which is 8 lumens, and the Day Flash, which has a 70 lumen output.

Battery life is stated as 14hrs for the High Solid light through to 30hrs for the Day and Night Flash settings, with the Radar Only mode supposedly capable of 40hrs.

As a light, I compared it to my other benchmark, the Exposure TraceR mk2. The Exposure weighs 49g (light and seat post bracket) while the TR70 is 84g for the equivalent setup. The TraceR is noticeably brighter in High Solid mode (3hr run-time) and Flash (6hrs), but when I select the Mid Solid mode with 6hrs run-time it is similarly bright to the TR70, with the TraceR nudging it as its lens creates a bigger ‘footprint of light’. It was getting really close however.

The TR70 Day flash is very visible, but there is darkness between each flash. The Exposure’s Flash mode (12hrs battery life) is therefore superior as the light is always on, with a pulse/flash every half a second or so. However, that difference also means the Coospo has a run-time of 30hrs in this mode.

Where the TR70 really shines over all the competition (that I’ve tried, tested or observed) is with its battery life. It boasts double or triple the battery life of its competitors in equivalent modes.

For example, for a High/Solid 20 lumen mode, the TR70 has a stated life of 14hrs, whereas the Bryton Gardia offers 8hrs, Wahoo claims 10hrs and the Garmins are 6hrs (with the camera off).

In Day Flash mode (up to 70 lumens), the TR70 will last for 30hrs, The Bryton’s equivalent is claimed to be 17hrs and the Garmin is 10hrs or 16hrs depending which model is used (RCT715/RTL515).

You can also set Auto Sleep and Power Saving mode on the App. AutoSleep will be activated after three minutes if no motion is detected, while Power Saving mode will reduce brightness when you drop below 15 per cent charge.

Coospo’s run-time claims seem reasonable. I managed to get 13:25hrs with the High Solid mode rather than the claimed 14hrs. However I exceeded the 22hrs in Breathing mode by a full hour, and still had 8% battery left. For all my testing I had Power Saving deactivated.

A full charge from 0-100 per cent took 2hrs using a 5V 1A computer USB source.

Usability

Pairing was really easy. I used a variety of devices, such as a Wahoo Elemnt Roam, an iPhone (on IOS26), and a Garmin RDU2 (radar display unit) which used either ANT+ or Bluetooth protocols. I had no issues at all, with easy initial pairing and reliable and robust connection when in use.

The app, meanwhile, is excellent. Although I didn’t ride with it on a phone, I used it in my roadside testing. It worked well there, but it is the options available via the settings that were exceptional. Not only could I switch between light modes on the app, I could also order them into a sequence that made sense to me.

I found that three settings suited me and my riding situation best (a solid night mode, the breathing flash for day, and the radar only mode), and this meant that I didn’t have to keep scrolling through unwanted modes. This is an absolutely brilliant idea – well done Coospo.

Plus it’s super easy to change if you need a different mode again. My riding buddy thought that the High Solid mode was too bright when riding on my wheel, so at the next stop I reactivated the Low Solid mode. This helped his eyes, while still being clearly visible from a long way down the road.

Additionally, you can see the exact percentage or battery charge in the app. This can be useful as the unit only gives you a couple of clues. It’s either green for 16-100 per cent charge, or red when you drop below 15 per cent.

The unit is classed as IP67 which means that it can withstand temporary water immersion, up to a depth of one meter, for 30 minutes – a really good standard to achieve. The USB-C port cover kept out any rain or spray.

The unit seems well built and there were no issues during testing. It also has a lanyard hole and a lanyard is supplied for those wishing to tether the unit to their seat rails. I also found that the quarter-turn Garmin-style fixing was solid through testing.

Value

Priced at £100.63, the Coospo TR70 Smart Radar Tail Light is significantly cheaper than nearly all the direct competition, apart from perhaps the Bryton Gardia R300L – although that’s still more expensive at £120.

The Bryton offers perhaps 95 per cent of the performance of the Garmin Varia. It will alert a second later than the Garmin and the light is very good, with fractionally inferior side lighting.

However, the Coospo beats the Bryton on price, while matching the Garmin on radar performance. The Garmin Varia RTL515 (£169.99) is also starting to show its age by still using a Micro-USB socket, and it is starting to trail with regard to battery life. Add in the TR70’s app customisability and its much lower price and it’s pretty much a no-brainer as the unit to get, unless you want a camera (Garmin Varia RCT715) and are prepared to pay for that feature (£299.99).

Even buying the Garmin RVR315 radar-only unit at £129.99, which is 51g plus a bracket, doesn’t seem such good value when you factor in a measly 7hr battery life. The Coospo is £30 cheaper, 13g heavier, has a ‘car approaching’ flash and a 40hr battery life in radar-only mode.

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The Coospo TR70 matches many of the performance aspects of the Garmin radar-wise, it has a great app, and it absolutely blows all of the competition out of the water with its battery life.

It’s a really impressive offering that functions well in all areas and is keenly priced. The competitors should be quaking in their boots.