Is Olight a good brand?

Is the quality of all their flashlights good? are all their flashlights reliable? and how does it stack up to competition such as Fenix,surefire, and nitecore

They have a long track record of making top notch stuff. That said, I would not recommend buying any light on brand alone. Look at the reviews of specific lights. CPFer selfbuilt is the gold standard for reviews.

cheeman150 said:

Is the quality of all their flashlights good? are all their flashlights reliable? and how does it stack up to competition such as Fenix,surefire, and nitecore

Click to expand...

olights are okay, they are the sister company of sorts of 4Sevens and Fenix.

if you are long enough in this bussiness, you would know that Olight and Fenix is one of the oldest brands that have been around since 2006. So, yes...they are a steady company with already a lot of product lines release. The M series are their best selling line so far (especially M20). Yes, there are some products that were not up to the standard, but their M series products should be given five stars only for the durability after all these years

I own an Olight M21...I think it's pretty good. I would rate the M series close to Surefire quality. Their prices more than make up for that small difference.

Realible & durable .

lightfooted said:

I would rate the M series close to Surefire quality

Click to expand...

I wouldnt want to go that far on rating them though

It goes without saying the Surefire lights are more reliable and have the best warranty (but you pay for it). Nitecore is certainly at the bottom of that list. I've had issues with every Nitecore I've owned. There have been quite a lot of problems with their piston lights and many on here are having issues with the new "tiny monster". Olight and Fenix are somewhere in the middle.

tre said:

It goes without saying the Surefire lights are more reliable and have the best warranty (but you pay for it). Nitecore is certainly at the bottom of that list. I've had issues with every Nitecore I've owned. There have been quite a lot of problems with their piston lights and many on here are having issues with the new "tiny monster". Olight and Fenix are somewhere in the middle.

Click to expand...

I suppose it depends on the user's experience with those brands. I've read of one user on this forum who has had multiple tailcap failures with the surefires he purchased for his tactical team. In case you ask, here is the link to the thread : https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/3775639
To the OP: Olight is a good brand as far as I know and from what I've seen. They have some excellent lights in their lineup.

tre said:

Nitecore is certainly at the bottom of that list. I've had issues with every Nitecore I've owned. There have been quite a lot of problems with their piston lights and many on here are having issues with the new "tiny monster". Olight and Fenix are somewhere in the middle.

Click to expand...

Nitecore and Jetbeam was and always has been in the bottom in terms of quality. Yes, they make remarkable products. That applies only on papers. They never really do the testing and proper QC before launching the products into the market. Let's hope the PA10 650lm (1x14500) wont mess up as the TM11 and Intellicharge.

By the way, let's get back to the topic. As mentioned, Olight was just a number away after Fenix in terms of the most reliable and trustable manufacturer in China. So, as long as the age of the company, I would think Olight has proven that they are not a hit and go company

I have an Olight i2. A nice little light and well priced. Does everything it is claimed to, but the threads are a little slack leading to mode skipping. But it has never let me down and I use it a lot for EDC.

BTW I have to agree about Nitecore. I love the look of their lights and they are very nicely built, but the UI in a lot of their lights needs work. A shame because they do push the boundaries quite a lot. If you want cutting edge technology, chose Nitecore, but don't expect 100% reliability. (Sorry gone off topic).

I have an Olight SR51 and an ITP both good lights IMO. I agree they are not sure fires but they aren't SF prices either.

thanks for the info!

kreisler said:

as can be seen from many youtube videos, Olight (new Chairman since 2010: David Chow) has been partnering with 4Sevens (Chairman, Founder & Owner: David Chow)

Click to expand...

agreed....

kreisler said:

co-founder of Fenix) which is itself an US-American company.
Olight's pricing is higher than Fenix from what i can tell. And 4Sevens (and SureFire) are even higher than that.

Click to expand...

This is not correct. He never was involved as co-founder of Fenix. Fenixstore.com (David's) was kicked out as Fenix dealer due to its violation in prices. A co-owner of Fenix wouldnt be kicked out of his own company?

By the way, the old owner of Olight is not much involved in Olight's production line anymore. Along with other new brands that were born in 2010 and 2011, I see that their products are not as aggresive as it used to. However, I need to admit that as far as SR series, Olight has done an incredible job at making it a solid unit. As I mention above, companies like Fenix and Olight wouldnt like to push things into boundary. While others would say anything to anybody, they tend to be the 'surefire' of Chinese brand and play it conservatively

lautamas said:

..not as aggresive as it used to... wouldnt like to push things into boundary... tend to be the 'surefire' of Chinese brand and play it conservatively

Click to expand...

Hi, are you hinting at the pricing policy or the updating policy? (please explain if possible, your quote)

With regard to the latter I have the feeling that biggos such as Olight, Fenix and SureFire have a hard time with updating their products with the latest LED technology and they keep producing old best-selling products with the same old LED (e.g. Q5, R5). In the current 2011 Surefire PDF catalog i have a hard time finding any flashlight with XML LED.. and Olight has released only a few updated models. Just yesterday i found out that Zhongwin (a sizeable OEM and ODM company; their own brand XENO) ships their models with the Cree XML U2 led, which is rather amazing. So in future, i am tending to purchase models by Solarforce or Zhongwin (they keep the pace of the LED development) rather than supporting the conservative (and expensive) global players.

kreisler said:

Hi, are you hinting at the pricing policy or the updating policy? (please explain if possible, your quote)

Click to expand...

I was actually referring to their product lines and how they rate their torches (read: not overrated). I wouldnt comment on pricing policy. Fenix is more expensive because with the same price, you can get a Jetbeam or any other torches with extra lumens. Can you imagine Fenix is releasing a PD32 just a couple of weeks ago with 313lm and R5 in it? While others are playing XM-L, fenix goes with R5. What can be more conservative than that?
It's not that Fenix cannot source for XM-L or even house an XM-L in an EDC such as PD32.
Anyhow, Olight released the T series in R5 as well while other brands (such as Thrunite at that time) was already in XML area for their EDCs.

I don't consider 4Sevens or Olight to be in the same league as Fenix. My limited experience with 4Sevens and Olight is that in general, they are not quite up to the standard of Fenix. I don't mind so much with Olight as they are a slightly cheaper brand, but unfortunately I haven't been really impressed with 4Sevens products so far.

I've bought a number of Olight M20s and can say that finding a better light would be difficult. I'm not a lumens hog and go for the 320 lumen model. Why? The low setting is rated 5 lumens for 600 hours! That's good enough to read by in a tent or a power outage. The light can be set for high/strobe if you want to use it for a defensive tool (either by the side switch or the rear switch). I don't see why a Surefire would rate higher. I initially bought the single-mode model (P60) for the rear blast ability, and the Olight can be set the same way. The light can temporarily blind an assailant and the Olight (M20) has excellent runtime. Runtime, durability, and the ability to be used as a self defense and outdoors tool are all the criteria I use to judge a good light. The M20 also is geared towards flood light, and that's good. I got a great light for throw from Deal Extreme, and use that when throw is needed. It was about $40, but I prefer flood.

my personal experience is a friends T10-T R5, I thought it was extremely well made and felt tough as nails, simple tactical ui was nice too, i didnt buy one because they seem to have a thing for 100 lumen mid modes which is twice what id want. I would buy an olight though for sure, above fenix def.
I have four nitecores all work perfectly and all well made lights i trust, they feel very solid too, my oldest extreme has had solme abuse and keeps going nicely - off topic maybe but i see a lot of negative nightcore around at the mo. my surefire e1l was by far the nicest light and the one i trusted most ( got stolen though :-( )

I had both a 2008 T-10 and T-20T. Excellent lights. Just decided I didn't care for the beam pattern and the cool tints. Might try a newer T20 one of these days.