Motorcycle Gear Review: P3 LED Lights

Greetings, readers!  This is my first official motorcycle gear review.  I plan on writing about all the gear and accessories I purchase for my motorcycle; I will try to be honest in my assessments, and hopefully my experience with these products can be of value to other riders.  *Note that I am not affiliated with any of the vendors or merchants listed.

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Product: P3 Lights - LED tail/brake lights and Photon Blaster LED front ’safety’ lights
Price: $149.95 per set (fronts only or rear only) + shipping
Source: www.p3lights.com and www.photonblaster.com (both operated by Skene Design)

Conspicuity is a term used a lot in motorcycling safety discussions, books, articles, and accident studies.  The official definition of the word is  ”the quality of being conspicuous; obviousness”.  There is an increasing acceptance of the role conspicuity plays in rider safety; if other road users can see you, they might be able to avoid hitting you - at least that is the premise.  As a new rider, I will take any advantage I can get on the streets, so I wear a motorcycle jacket with neon ‘hi-viz’ yellow accents and a white helmet to help me ’stick out’ to car drivers.  Another popular technique to increase conspicuity is to add bright LED lighting to motorcycle itself; there are dozens of options of varying quality and price points for this common modification.  The focus of this review is a set of LED lights from a company called Skene Design.  I saw these lights on display at my local BMW dealership; they impressed me with the brightness and the user-programmability.  At $150 per pair, these are probably the most expensive LED light kits available for motorcycles, but I am a firm believer in the adage that ‘the price is long forgotten when the quality remains’.

First up, the P3 rear LEDs.  These lights are installed to the existing license plate frame of the bike, so they sit just to the left and right of the plate.

P3 Lights - rear LEDs

These lights provide triple functionality as tail / running lights, brake lights, and emergency flashers.  The tail light function operates at a reduced intensity (but still very bright).  Where they differ from other LED lights, however, is their very noticeable flicker that is only visible when viewed from an angle to the rear; drivers directly behind the motorcycle will not notice this faint blinking action. I personally like this feature, since it really gives nearby drivers a highly visible indication of my presence on the road.

There are several options for brake light functionality.  First, they can operate as standard brake lights, coming on as a solid high-intensity light with the stock light.  Second, they can be set to blink four times slowly when the brake is first activated (either front or rear brake), then come on solid.  The third, and default setting, is for the lights to blink four times quickly, then four times slowly, then stay on solid.  The benefit to this second and third setting is that the flashing of the lights is more apt to get the attention of the following driver, giving him or her a few tenths of a second to process that you slowing down.  Anecdotal reports on motorcycle forums from many long time riders that have added this type of ‘decaying’ brake light flash pattern report an increase in the space given by following drivers.  See my youtube video review for a demonstration of this setting.

The last feature of the P3 lights is the programmable emergency flasher function.  With the ignition switched on, the lights can be set in one of three possible flasher settings: continuous flash (flash twice per second), rapid continuous flash (flash 5 times per second), or quad flash (flash rapidly 4 times, pause, then repeat).  The programming is done with 7, 8, or 9 pulls of the brake lever within five seconds of turning on the ignition.

Installation of these lights is straightforward.  Using the included wire taps (T-Taps), three wires leading from the LED control module are connected to tail light, brake light, and ground on the motorcycle.  Then two wires from each LED module are connected to the LED control module using included three-way connectors.  The instructions are very clear, and there are even easier to follow diagrams on the p3lights.com site.

As you can tell, I am very impressed with the P3 lights.  I do, however, have a couple of minor complaints.  First, the wires coming from the LED modules seem very fragile to me.  Since LEDs draw very little power, very thin gauge wiring can be used, the vendor used probably the thinnest possible electrical wire for this application.  I would have liked to see the wiring covered or somehow better protected from accidental pulls or breaks.  Second, the T-Tap connectors are cool, but I’m not crazy about them.  This is just my opinion of course, but I found them a touch tricky to work with in the confined space of my existing motorcycle tail light wiring.

Even with these minor nits, I still recommend the P3 LED lights without hesitation.  If your budget allows, and you want very easy-to-install auxilliary rear lighting with terrific functionality, in my opinion these are the best option available.

Now onto the front safety lights, or ‘Photon Blasters’.  These have the same exact physical dimensions as the rear P3 lights, but they operate in only a single mode, a high-intensity forward-facing running light.  These are amber, which I presume should be effective as ‘warning’ or ‘caution’ lights.  These front lights do not offer any increased lighting for the rider to see the road; they are strictly to increase the conspicuity of the motorcycle from the front.  As with the P3 lights, they have a flickering action when viewed from an off-angle.  According to the vendor, these lights must be mounted at 90 degress to the ground for maximum effect as they have a 3o degree light spread.  The following picture shows my lights as they are mounted to the fender bolts on each side of the fender.

Mounting and installation are easy.  I have mine mounted to the front fender bolts; but depending on the motorcycle fork layout, there are options to mount to caliper bolts as well.  Since Skene Design did not have the Nighthawk 750 listed on their site, I was instructed to email them a picture or a schematic of the front fork.  The owner, Jerry Skene, responded within a day and told me which mounting kit should work.  Very helpful!

In summary, these lights are expensive, but their ease of installation, out-of-the box functionality, and incredible brightness make them a solid “buy” in my opinion.

To see both the P3 Lights and the Photon Blaster lights in action, check out my youtube video review!