Olight X7 Review (3x XHP70, 4x HDC 18650, 9000 lumens)

radiopej

Enlightened
Joined
Jun 17, 2013
Messages
827
Location
Sydney, Australia
Submitted for consideration for the reviews section. This light was sent to me by Olight/LiteShop.

Manufacturer's Specifications

Emitter: 3x CREE XHP70 (Cool White)
313 m throw
Type III Anodised Aluminium
Orange Peel Triple Reflector
Strengthened ultra-clear glass lens with anti-reflective coating
Battery type:
- 4x button-top 18650 batteries, although 2x 18650s can be used with lower output and runtime – the light uses 2 batteries in series, and then has those 2 in parallel.
- Batteries must be able to sustain a discharge current >8 A to achieve 9000 lumens
- Batteries must be able to sustain a discharge current >5 A to achieve 5500 lumens
- The interior of the body has 4 integrated aluminium battery holders, each of which is 18.8 mm in diameter. The recommended Olight batteries are 18.4 in diameter x 69 mm in length.
- Olight recommends using the ORB-186S35 10A, 3600 mAh batteries they produce to achieve 9000 lumens.
Reverse polarity protection (needs button-top cells)
Water-proof to 2 m (IPX-8 standard)
Impact resistant to 1 m
Length x diameter (head / body): 127 x 68 / 52 mm
Weight: 472 g (without batteries)
Battery capacity indicator
Instant access to "nightlight", "Turbo", "Turbo S" and strobe modes
Memory function for modes from nightlight to high.
Active thermal management (ATM) – output reduced to keep the light below 55°C
Lock-out mode


Output

It was very hard to get tailcap readings. For nightlight to high, they were measured when just using 2 batteries

Turbo S (9000 lumens, lowered to 1800 with ATM): 2.5 + 200 mins
Turbo (5500 lumens, lowered to 1800 with ATM – 6.4 A): 8 + 215 mins
High (3000 lumens, lowered to 1800 with ATM – 2.2 A): 32 + 200 mins
Medium (1000 lumens – 900 mA): 6.5 hours
Low (300 lumens – 320 mA): 18 hours
Nightlight (3 lumens – 10 mA): 30 days
Strobe (10 hz).

Peak Beam Intensity: 24,500 candela (313 metre range)

Included in Package

1x Olight X7
1x Holster
1x User Manual

Initial Impressions

Seeing the box is a little bit exciting. Well, okay, I squealed at work when it arrived. The box gives it a premium feel, although I'd be comfortable throwing it out after this review. This is important to me, as it took me ages to throw out the hard plastic boxes I received with other lights because it felt as though I needed to keep them.










This is a chunky light, but tiny for what it puts out. You definitely notice the weight in the hand, which I find amusing since a chunky Maglite was once the norm. This weight helps with heatsinking, as the LEDs generate a lot of heat. This light is the absolute limit for what I'd consider putting into a jacket pocket, but even then it makes your jacket lopsided. Fortunately, it comes with a handy holster for those who carry flashlights for "legitimate" purposes. In Sydney, our police have load bearing vests, and I think that would be a good way to carry a holstered X7, rather than putting it on a belt. For everybody else, this is likely to be left in a car, put in a bag or taken in your jacket when specifically needed, rather than as an EDC item.




The brightness from this thing is insane. I hadn't read the manual when I got it, so I just assumed that double clicking the button put it on the 9000 lumen mode, and was showing that to people as we were all impressed. Only after checking the manual 30 minutes later did I find out that I had been using the 5500 Turbo mode – Turbo S required another double click. This light has really ruined my perception of brightness when I look at other lights – they all just seem dim in comparison.

The single button feels like it's right where it should be. In essence, this is a giant, overpowered Olight S1 and it is glorious.





Physical Characteristics

This is a very sleek (albeit chunky), smooth light without any crenellations. The blue PVD coating on the bezel and around the button provides a beautiful contrast. The body is covered in square knurling that gives you a decent grip. However, between the diameter of the body and weighting of the light it starts to slip when wet. Everything is operated through a single button, which is recessed enough to avoid accidental activations. I found it was overall comfortable in the hand.

The 3 XHP70 emitters are focused through a rather short, triple orange peel reflector. Two of the emitters were very slightly off centre, but this didn't seem to affect the beam profile. Between the large LEDs and the short, textured reflectors this light is designed to put out a floody beam that illuminates everything (discussed later).






The light is capable of tailstanding very securely, letting you bounce the beam off a ceiling to illuminate the room. This is due to the nice, flat tail end.

The light handles heat well for a while, although the active thermal management kicks in a little too late for my liking. When left unattended, the light got as high as 56 °C. The light got too hot for me to hold rather quickly on Turbo S mode. However, I feel there is a caveat here – even when I worked as a barista, my hand would burn at around 40-45 °C while frothing milk when other people could comfortably get to 55-60 °C, so your mileage may vary. By holding the light, you help with heat dissipation, so expect it to heat up faster when tailstanding.

I know Olight was considering the incorporation of built-in charging on this model. I'm a bit bummed that they removed it, but at the same time I can appreciate that they weighed that against the size of the light and the safety in charging. Still, it would have been handy.

Rather than use a plastic battery carrier, Olight has machined in slots within the body to hold the batteries. The springs are only at one end of each battery, ruling out use as a weapon light.



There are 2 little posts to align the tail cap springs with the batteries, and then the tailcap screws in.


I threw it into the air a few times and let it smack the floor. It worked fine. I also dropped it off the 2nd​ storey of our house onto the grass. It continued to work fine.
There may be an issue with the electronics, in that extended use seems to make the contact points less effective and the light less reliable (discussed below).

User Interface and Modes

Everything is controlled by a single button. Pressing the button once turns the light on to the last mode used, provided that that mode was nightlight, low, medium or high. Holding this button down when on cycles through the modes (low-medium-high). You just let go when on the mode you want to stay on. Holding the button down while off activates moonlight, but holding it longer puts it into a lockout mode.

Double pressing the button turns the light on to the 5500 lumen Turbo mode. Double pressing it again from there gives you 9000 lumens. Pressing the button 3 or more times from any mode (or off) gives you strobe. I'm not sure which brightness level it's at, but to me the strobe appears to be at 5500 lumens. If you switch it off from a turbo mode, it will memorise this for up to 10 minutes. After that, turning it on will start in medium mode. There are no optional shutdown timers, as there were on the S1.
The S1 never memorised the moonlight/nightlight mode, which I preferred. It let me have the light set to low, with instant access to moonlight and turbo when I wanted it. However, my girlfriend much prefers the memorised option, so she can use moonlight without waiting. They've also followed this UI with the new S1R. Personally, I'm not a fan of it reverting to medium from turbo modes – I really liked having moonlight, low and turbo modes on instant call. I think they made the right call in not having it memorise the turbo mode though – otherwise, I can just see so much going wrong if somebody borrows the light and has it blind them. Speaking of moonlight, there was a bit of variability in brightness here between the two lights I received. One felt like around 3 lumens, while the other was closer to 1 in comparison. It's finicky, but I do prefer moonlight to be very, very low. Olight could potentially have just activated a single emitter at the lowest possible setting for a lower moonlight, but I don't know if that's possible with their wiring setup.

The claim of 9000 lumens is simultaneously accurate and misleading. The light is quite capable of putting out 9000 lumens, but only for a few minutes at a time – the 2.5 minutes suggested by Olight is just a rough guide, and in practice it managed longer than this. However, the battery charge falls below the value needed to sustain this rather quickly. After about 10 minutes or so, you cannot enter the 9000 lumen Turbo S mode anymore. The "regular" 5500 lumen Turbo mode is still accessible after this time. Olight says that the battery voltage needs to be above 7.2 V (2x 3.6 V), but I found that I couldn't get the Turbo S mode to re-activate when the voltage per cell was 3.9 V, so I think the cut-off is actually higher than this. So while this light can definitely put out 9000 lumens, I personally approach it differently. I see it as a 1000 lumen light that can emit light for ages, or 1800-3000 lumens for quite a respectable amount of time. The 9000 lumen mode (and even the 5500 lumen mode) is very handy, but is really there for when you need to very briefly check out more of your surroundings. I don't think this is a problem at all – they very well could have made a light that only puts out 1800 lumens more consistently, but then you would never be able to push it a little further. In other words, I consider the turbo modes a welcome bonus.

One caveat – sometimes if I turned it straight to Turbo S from low, it would turn off and then not turn on again. To fix this I had to unscrew the tailcap and screw it back on. It happened very rarely, but would be of concern when you're depending on the light. Eventually, the light wouldn't enter Turbo S mode anymore. I contacted Olight and they recommended cleaning the contact points. I did this with a chopstick and alcohol, but it didn't help. So they sent me an additional model for comparison in case it was an issue with the one I received. After leaving this new light on Turbo S repeatedly for an extended period of time, the same thing happened.

For Christmas I got a Dremel, and cleaning the contact points more vigorously with some power behind it did the trick. Maybe I was just being too gentle. The light works as new. Still, this is potentially a massive problem for those who regularly use the light on higher modes. They could clean it with every charging, but it's a fair amount of hassle for a problem that really shouldn't happen.

Beamshots and Useful Light

Aside from the heavy weight, this is an amazing light for walking. The beam profile was perfect for softly illuminating a path for quite a few people on low. In spite of the awesome brightness, the beam is very, very floody. Rather than go for a stupidly intense light, Olight has chosen to spread the light out to increase the usefulness of the beam. Personally, I think this was a great idea, though you may not feel it's as bright as you'd think due to the lack of intensity. It's no slouch though - it lights up my whole back yard without even trying. Having used this light, I feel that every other light is just dim.





Tailstanding on low easily illuminated my bathroom so I could shower when our bulb died, though admittedly I found it more fun to run it on medium.

Conclusions

I love this light. After you get used to it (maybe 2 minutes), it becomes quite intuitive to use. The use of a single button to control everything means that in the worst case, you squeeze the button and at least get some light. I think it's a great light for dedicated walks, or if you can use it often enough, a pretty good light to keep in the car. It provided many useful levels of light, although the moonlight should ideally be lower. As an example, it would work as a light to be kept inside a vehicle for police who can then carry a much smaller light on their body. It would let them rapidly scan a large area when needed, or keep an area lit for a long time. The only worry in these instances is the weird thing where the light just doesn't turn on. This may be hugely problematic if it's "mission critical" or something, but if you're okay with giving it a thorough cleaning with each recharge it should be ok. It's definitely a point that Olight should address, and my only serious criticism of what is otherwise a brilliant light. Well done to Olight.
 
Last edited:

Bucur

Enlightened
Joined
Nov 27, 2012
Messages
205
Location
Yalova, Turkey
Radiopej, thank you for your review.

I am using this light for a while and I too got better results after cleaning the contact points with alcohol, albeit only with a chopstick. I have a Dremel and thanks to your tip, I will give it a try to see if it will further improve performance.

My problem was not the same, though. Mine was always turning ON before cleaning the contact points but the Turbo S mode was available only when the batteries were full to the brim. Once they were below a rest voltage of about 4.1V per cell, Turbo S was no longer available. After cleaning the contact points, the same batteries were able to power the Turbo S mode down to 3.84V (rest). These were Orbtronic 3500mAh (ORB3500P) cells.

With Samsung 30Qs, Turbo S is available down to about 3.77V (rest) per cell. My point is that the lowest rest voltage at which Turbo S can be activated seems to depend on which batteries are used. Since higher discharge rate batteries suffer less voltage sag under load, the behavior of the X7 at Turbo S mode seems to depend on the discharge rate that the batteries are capable of.
 

radiopej

Enlightened
Joined
Jun 17, 2013
Messages
827
Location
Sydney, Australia
Thanks for that. With the Dremel, I still used a chopstick - I basically added an isopropanol wipe to one end with a rubber band, and popped the other end into the Dremel. I suspect it would work fine with the chopsticks alone, but I was hesitant to scrape it too vigorously.

I used the supplied Olight HDC batteries. I think you're probably right, and the performance is highly dependent on the batteries.
 
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