Most bike bells are equipped with a friendly ding-dong sound that alerts people in front you are coming through without causing a ruckus. It’s a pleasant sound. Problem is, many people tend to ignore pleasant sounds, so it’s not uncommon for the warning horn of bike bells to fall on seemingly deaf ears. That won’t be the case with the Trek BellBeats.
Instead of coming with an analog bell, this cycling accessory is actually fitted with a small speaker and various preloaded alert sounds, so you can choose which sounds you want to play on the fly. That means, you can go for light sounds if the people are likely to hear it and switch to more aggressive bike sound if you’re afraid of getting ignored, hopefully making for a more effective warning sound.
The Trek BellBeats is, basically, a small speaker clad in the familiar likeness of an old-school bike bell that you mount on the handlebar. Like those bike bells, it has a lever that you can press to activate the alert tones, so it should feel familiar to anyone who’s used a bike bell before, while allowing you to choose from eight different preloaded sounds. You can choose among the eight sounds using the playback buttons on the speaker, with the option to pick up to two at a time. When you choose two, a short press of the lever will play one sound and a long press will play another, so you can have one calmer sound and a more aggressive one to choose from at all times.
According to the outfit, all the alert tones are meant to be fun and friendly, much like chime of analog bike bells, although all the tones have been digitally-enhanced to share a full range of frequencies to make them easier to hear, while making it easier to identify which position they’re coming from. That way, people actually know how to properly avoid you soon as they hear bell.
The Trek BellBeats is also a functional Bluetooth speaker, so you can use it to play music while you pedal along on the road, complete with a play/pause button and volume controls. Granted, we’ll probably be annoyed hearing a cyclist playing loud music on a speaker while they pass through, but you do you. You can also easily remove the speaker from its handlebar mount (the lever that activates the chimes stay on the bike), so you can put it in your pocket for use as your mobile speaker anywhere you go. That means, you can bike to school and use the Bluetooth speaker to play tunes in between classes. Fun. Additionally, it offers looping ambient sounds that can be played on the speakers, which they recommend for trail riding to keep any hikers or animals aware of your presence.
The bell, by the way, has an IP67 rating, so it should be safe to use, even in the middle of heavy rains. It has a six-hour battery rating between charges, with a four-LED battery indicator on the speaker body, so you can monitor the real-time charge at a glance.
The Trek BellBeats is available now, priced at $99.99.