Skip to main content

Livall Bling cycling helmet review

It might look like a circus on your head, but this connected bike helmet works

Livall LED bike helmet
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Livall Bling cycling helmet
MSRP $277.00
“Loud and proud, the Livall Bling boldly blazes where no bike helmet has gone before, if you can shirk the smirks of onlookers and handle the weight.”
Pros
  • High-visibility lighting
  • Built-in speakers
  • Emergency email notification in case of crash
  • Answer calls without getting phone out
Cons
  • Kooky looking
  • Too heavy for extended rides

“Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.“

The race to connect cyclists and their gear seems to have cut a detour around helmets.

What’s up with the clown hat?

You can buy heart-rate monitors worn on the chest, cadence sensors on the cranks, and even power meters built into hubs and pedals, but not much has been done to bring helmets into the connected app world. China-based Livall wants to change that with the Bling, a connected helmet that adds lights, turn signals, Bluetooth speakers, and even a microphone for taking calls.
Recommended Videos

But does it add up to a safer helmet, or a novel distraction?

Features and design

With 80 LEDs scattered across its EPS foam and plastic shell, the Bling is appropriately named; this is a helmet that will get you noticed. Eight of them on the back double as turn signals when paired with Livall’s handlebar mounted Jet Bluetooth remote. Five rows of LED lights up top pulse through different colors, making the helmet look like a miniature airport runway lit up at night.

Then there’s the audio bling. Stereo Bluetooth speakers built into the helmet directly above the ears allow a rider to listen to music without blocking out ambient sound. A wind-proof mic allows a cyclist to take phone calls while riding. The mic also works in “walkie-talkie” mode when other Bling helmets are nearby. For extra safety, the Bling includes an accelerometer that will trigger an email to friends and family in the event of a crash.

A button pad located directly below the visor lets you control these onboard functions on the fly. There’s a function button in the middle, and left and right selection buttons that help when scrolling through a menu or adjusting the volume.

While some of the features are interesting, all of them together in one helmet can be a bit overwhelming. 

A handlebar mountable remote control called the Bling Jet lets you control the functions of the helmet from the bars, and even take pictures on a compatible connected phone.

With this much built in tech, we expected the Bling to be ugly, but Livall designers have done a smooth job of packing all the tech into a helmet that (ignoring the flashing lights) looks very much like a regular commuter helmet. It features an adjustable chin strap, and a dial in the back which can be tightened or loosened to finely tune the Bling’s fit.

What’s in the box

The Livall Bling Helmet we tested arrived with the helmet, the Jet handlebar mountable Bluetooth remote, a Bluetooth cadence sensor, and a USB charging cable.

Performance and use

The Livall Blings is what we like to call a “what-if” product. It’s as if the designers sat down and listed all the things anyone ever wanted in a connected helmet and if the technology exists, they put it in. While some of the features are interesting, all of them together in one helmet can be a bit overwhelming.

Getting the helmet running requires downloading Livall’s Riding app, available for free on Android and iOS. After signing up, we paired the Bling with our phone, powered it up and strapped it to our heads.

“What’s up with the clown hat?” a friend asked the first time he saw the helmet.

“Clown hat?” we replied.

“Yeah, it looks like there’s a circus on top of your head,” he said, chuckling.

He wasn’t wrong. While being visible out on the road has its upsides, the sheer visual loudness of the lights flashing all over the top of the Bling would be enough to embarrass many cyclists. Reactions on our first ride ranged from smirks to open laughter. It’s great that this helmet will get you noticed, but you had better be prepared for the attention.

Listening to music without blocking ambient traffic noise with headphones was a treat … when we were going slow. The speakers worked well and we were still able to hear cars approaching, horns honking, and people talking as they passed. At any speed over 18 miles an hour, however, wind noise makes it difficult to hear much detail from the music. The visor-mounted buttons made it easy to adjust the volume, skip tracks, and even answer the phone. The mic worked well while we were stopped (we wouldn’t suggest taking calls while riding).

Livall LED bike helmet
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Not surprisingly, the Livall Bling has a bit of a weight problem. At 1.13 pounds, the Bling is twice as heavy as most performance cycling helmets. The weight of a helmet may not matter much to someone who is only wearing it on a 10-minute ride to the store on a city bike, but for those who commute 45 minutes to work, or regularly hit 50 miles on training ride, the helmet can be downright oppressive. After about 25 minutes in the Bling, we began to feel a strain on our neck that soon turned into throbbing pain. It wasn’t that the helmet was out of balance — the designers have done a great job of balancing the weight — it’s simply that the helmet is too heavy.

Conclusion

With built-in Bluetooth speakers, 80 LEDs, turn signals, and automatic crash detection, no other helmet even comes close in functionality to the Livall Bling. If you don’t mind having “a circus on your head,” you’re undeniably more visible with the Bling on full blast, and being able to hear traffic over your music will keep you safer, too.

But if your plans include longer rides, you’ll find the Bling is simply too heavy for serious cycling. If you just want music and better visibility while you pile on the miles, a pair of earbuds and a little blinky light on your favorite helmet might be the best option.

The Bling helmet will retail for $277 in October, however, Livall’s fundraising page on Indigogo still has a few available for $100 (including the Jet remote and Cadence sensor).

Highs

  • High-visibility lighting
  • Built-in speakers
  • Emergency email notification in case of crash
  • Answer calls without getting phone out

Lows

  • Kooky looking
  • Too heavy for extended rides
Lee Crane
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Lee Crane's career in action sports spans print, TV, and digital media; his work and handsome mug have appeared in and on Fox…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
How does Garmin measure stress, and is it really accurate?
Garmin Vivomove Sport dial close up. Credits: Garmin official.

Garmin watches are known for their robust activity tracking, but that's not all these fitness watches can do. Over the years, the company has been adding wellness features to its lineup of watches. These new health-focused metrics allow people to analyze their fitness and identify outside factors affecting their performance. One such factor is stress, which is something Garmin watches actively measures.
But you may be wondering—exactly how does Garmin measure stress? In this article, we break down how Garmin measures stress and delve into the accuracy of this metric. Should you trust your stress score? Read on to find out.

Is Garmin's stress score accurate?

Read more