The Blackburn Mars 3.0 Bicycle Tail Light: A Review

Strictly as a tail light, the Mars 3.0 is fine. It's a good size, it's very visible, it has three modes from solid red to flashing red to flashing red with sparkling amber lights on the side (a nice touch that more inexpensive bike tail lights don't have.)

There are some just inexplicably terrible concepts in the design here, though, enough so to make it really not worth bothering with over just getting some $3 flasher on special at Big Lots or whatever your local big-box close-out emporium is.

To install the batteries - two AAs - you need to first remove three screws from the back of the light that require a jeweler's screwdriver. OK, requiring an uncommon tool is a nice thing to mention on your packaging - which this light doesn't bother to - but we'll let that one slide for now.
The problem is, that's all the instructions indicate you need to do to pop the case off. As it turns out, however, the rubber molding covers it in such a way that you're simply not getting that off with your fingers alone. So you need another jeweler's screwdriver - a flathead this time - to sort of pry around under the rubber until the top part of the case actually comes off.

No problem, you say? I have jeweler's screwdrivers and I don't mind a bit of work that shouldn't be necessary (and isn't mentioned in the crappy instructions), you say? Well, I hope you also have a comically oversized flathead screwdriver on tap, because you'll need one of those too. You see, the piece on the mounting bracket that holds the light to the seat post is basically just the same design as the wristband of a cheap department store "sports watch". Except it's fixed in place with a cheap little plastic screw with a ginormous (for its size) flathead slot. The screw is too small and too tight to work loose with fingers, if that was their intent - I don't know because, again, the crappy instructions don't mention anything at all about the mounting bracket. So you have to screw it out with whatever is on hand, in my case a paint scraper, since who the hell keeps a flathead that big around that isn't some kind of a tradesman? Unfortunately, the plastic used for the screw is so cheap that the slot begins to strip out the second you touch anything to it, making me wonder how many times it can actually be screwed and unscrewed before it becomes useless. And once mounted to the post and tightened, the light still can't be made 100% secure, it has a bit of slide to it up and down the post when minimal pressure is applied.

It's a good thing the light touts 50 to 150 hours of battery life (depending on what mode you use) because I can't imagine going through all that garbage more than two or three times a year at absolute most.