Lezyne KTV Drive Pro+ rear light review: Compact, bright, but starting to feel a bit dated

It’s getting harder and harder to deny that summer’s pretty much over now, and it’s time to say goodbye to all those lovely long days of riding. With the nights starting to creep in earlier, it’s time once again to dig out your lights for the dark commutes.

I’ll be the first to admit to sometimes forgetting a front light and feeling my way home in the dark, but rear lights are a non-negotiable for me. Whether I’m commuting home through rush-hour chaos, sneaking in a post-work spin, or just making myself harder to miss on a bright day, a good quality back light comes with a lot of reassurance.

The Lezyne KTV Drive Pro+ rear light is the latest update in a long-running line, which I’ve been familiar with for about a decade now. It shows the brand sticking with its tried-and-tested recipe: compact size, simple mounting, waterproof toughness, with a punchy 150 lumens in Day Flash mode.

Having spent years using older KTV lights, this new Pro+ felt instantly familiar when I strapped it onto my seatpost. Over the past couple of months I’ve tested it in everything from clear late-summer evenings to running soggy September errands, to see if Lezyne’s formula still feels good in 2025, and whether it holds up against the competition in our guides to the best bike lights and best budget bike lights.

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Design and setup

The design of the KTV Drive Pro+ is very much the same as it’s always been. At 50g, it’s pretty compact and sturdy. The rugged casing is claimed to be IPX7 waterproofed, meaning it should shrug off anything short of being dropped in a canal. There’s also a small rubber adapter so the light can sit flush against D-shaped or aero posts, which is a thoughtful touch.

Mounting is very simple: it’s secured by way of a rubber strap that loops quickly around a seatpost, seatstay, or rack. There are three loop options so you can adjust tightness to suit your mounting point, and provided you attach it to something solid, once it’s on it stays put without bouncing. That said, when you strap it to a bag loop you’ll notice some movement, which is to be expected but worth keeping in mind if that’s something that bothers you.

If you’ve used a Lezyne light before then the charging system will be familiar: there’s an integrated male USB stick tucked beneath a rubber bung. It’s clever in that it keeps the light compact and sealed against rain, but in 2025 it feels quite dated. Some USB sockets won’t accept the stubby prong at all, and unlike with USB-C lights you can’t just plug in a cable or power bank mid-ride. And that’s if you even have a USB port available to charge from, since most devices and adapters are geared towards the much more favourable USB-C these days. While the charging system works well, it relies on you having the right socket available. In a world where almost every other rear light has moved to USB-C, this feels like the one part of the KTV that hasn’t kept up with the times.

In addition to all that, the rubberised cover sits particularly tight on this model, which is great for waterproofing, but less so when you’re trying to wrestle it off with cold hands after a wet ride.

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Performance

Shifting to how the Lezyne KTV Drive Pro+ actually performs, it was unsurprising to me that it packs a decent amount of punch for its size, as I’ve always found these lights to be very good in that respect. It comes with six output modes, ranging from a 150 lumen Day Flash setting, through to 50 lumens at a steady beam (Blast) or Pulse, all the way down to Economy 10 lumen setting that’ll last for ages. There’s also Flash 1, which is a 25 lumen pulsing mode, and the 5 lumen Femto setting, which is essentially an emergency mode that’ll provide up to 20 hours of runtime if needed.

In practice, Day Flash is the main event. It’s properly visible in bright sunlight and gave me the most confidence while riding on busy city centre roads. Pulse and Blast were my go-to modes for dusk and early evening, while Economy served as a “just in case” option when I wanted to eke out the battery life for all it was worth. Flash 1 on the other hand was okay, but felt a bit superfluous. At 25 lumens it does the job, but I mostly found myself switching to the 50-lumen Pulse setting when I wanted a flash mode. Considering how quickly it gets dark once you hit the twilight hours, if you’re reserving flash mode for that in-between period, you don’t actually need it for very long, so the lower-powered setting only really makes sense if you’re conscious of preserving battery for a long stint on with a steady beam once it’s fully dark.

Battery life ranges from about 3 hours in Blast mode to 20 hours in Femto. Charging takes around three hours, which isn’t bad at all. The power indicator is exactly the same as it’s always been: a very small light within the body of the clear casing. It does the job but isn’t particularly informative: green means full, half-green-half-red means somewhere between 75% and 25%, and red means you’re nearly empty. It’s easy to learn, but that 75–25% window is so vague it can leave you second-guessing whether you’ve got enough charge for one more commute. And when charging, the light just flips from red to green, with no progress indicator in between.

In day-to-day use, the KTV Pro+ is a tough little unit. It survived being thrown around in the bottom of a backpack filled with books, tools, and all sorts of accoutrements from my daily life, swapped between multiple bikes without any wear showing on the strap, and doused in drizzle (and on one occasion, an onslaught of sideways rain) without complaint. Because of the small lens area, the beam's pattern is pretty tight, so it doesn’t spread quite as wide, but the focused flash is hard to miss on the road.

The trade-off is that while the KTV Drive Pro+ does everything well, it doesn’t do anything remarkably better than its competition. Brands like Cateye and Magicshine now offer rear lights with larger lens areas, brake-light features, and USB-C charging for the same or even less money. That makes the Lezyne feel a little conservative, like it’s resting on its laurels rather than pushing forward. That said, there are plenty of other more advanced models in Lezyne’s range, so if you’re opting for the KTV Drive Pro+, you may not want any bells and whistles. You just need to make sure you’ve got a USB plug adapter for charging.

Verdict

The Lezyne KTV Drive Pro+ rear light is compact, solid, and bright enough to make you stand out in daylight thanks to its 150-lumen Day Flash mode, and that’s exactly what you want from a rear light. The mount is reliable and versatile, making it easy to swap between a fleet of bikes and attach to different sized and shaped anchor points if needed. While I didn’t drop it in a canal, the waterproofing held up really well against UK “summer” weather.

But the design is starting to show its age. The integrated USB stick is more hassle than help in 2025, the cover is very tight and can be quite annoying to try to manoeuvre off the unit, and the power indicator feels too simplistic when there are so many more informative options out there. With many modern rivals offering smarter charging and bigger, more visible lenses, the KTV Drive Pro+ doesn’t quite stand out the way it once did.

If you value toughness, small size, and simplicity, the KTV Drive Pro+ is still a very reliable choice. In a crowded rear-light market, I guess it just feels more like the safe option than the exciting one (provided you have the required USB port).