Knog make fixie lights!

How Knog got this enviable reputation for providing lights cool enough to adorn even the hippest fixie is a mystery that Knog are no doubt eager to protect. Knog lights aren’t just acceptible on a fixie in many cases they’re de rigueur, and more Knoggons on your fixie make you more cool not less.

Knog started life as a design company with a focus on bike stuff. As such they’ve innovated and created some great looking products for bicycles. For a moment they had rackless panniers, an invention of an RMIT design student, but obviously they failed to gain a foot in the market. But it’s this kind of innovation, and I think more lately an eye for the market, that has given us the products that now seem to hold place at the peak of bicycle cooldom. (Knog panniers now come with the German Klickfix attachments, which you can decipher here.)

As a side note, Knog used to have the wankiest and weirdest website I ever saw. I know it’s all about market positioning and differentiating yourself from the corporate hoards, but their version of an alternative website was a victory of style over function. If it wasn’t for the fact that the babe was so awesome I would have stopped returning to it again and again.

Rather than fight the wave of cool that emanated from Knog I’ve joined them (because I’m uncool enough already) and have acquired a Knog Gekko. Many thanks to Goldcross for supplying this item on sale for the incredibly low price of $39, otherwise known as the retail price on the Knog website. (Did I hear someone say misleading advertising?)

It’s a gekko mate.

The Knog Gekko is very much representative of what you can expect from Knog. The design is simple and pleasing and well thought out. Whereas there are plenty of flashing LEDs on sale with rap-around elastic the Knog has incorporated the wrap-aroundy bit into the moulding that holds the light together. This is a pretty simple innovation but a gooden. The design is finished off with a row of lights that terminate in a nipple that toggles the lights on and off.

And Knog said, let there be LED lights.

As you would expect from any LED light the Knog Gekko has about 50 thousand different flashing modes. If you’re patient I’m sure you’ll find your favourite. It’s often hard to decide between lights running up or running down in sequence but maybe after a couple weeks of trying both you can learn which you like best…

The design looks like it would survive whatever sub-tropical downpour we might sometimes get caught out in during a Gold Coast summer. Knog, who work hard to be different, have some great images on their website of people riding underwater with the lights on. I’m not sure if the picture was taken two seconds before the light frizzed out or whether they worked for weeks afterwards, but anyway it helps convince us they’ll survive whatever elements we can.