[Review] Olight Warrior X - 2000 Lumens, 560 meters

Hi everyone, my first post here!
I've been doing some flashlight reviews on my website but in Vietnamese only. I think it's a good chance to improve my English as well as to share my experience with you :wave:
*****

So Olight dropped the Warrior X a month ago with a claim that it would change the way we use tactical flashlight, let see if they're just talkers!

This light is very similar to the Olight M23 by looking but it feels much more solid holding on hand. Olight used more material on this for the dual-layer body and larger heat sink plates.









Magnetic tail cap was remained the same as on the M2R




Deep smooth reflector combines with Cree XHP35 HI emitter that promise a 560 meters beamshot, which is impressive for its size.

One more new feature on this light it that the simple UI of only 2 brightness modes: 2000 and 300 Lumens. It also has another mode group that containing additional strobe mode.

Specificaitions

• Emitter: XHP35 HI in Neutral White ( i assume it's around 4700k)
• Maximum brightness: 2000 Lumens
• Maximum beam distance: 560m - 1837ft
• Battery: 1 x 18650 high drain battery (included)
• Brightness levels: 2
• Mode groups: 2
• Strobe: yes
• Charging type: tail cap switch equipped with magnetic charger
• Vibrating power indicator feature
• Length: 142mm
• Head diameter: 41mm
• Body diameter: 25.4mm
• Weight: 218g (excluding battery)
• Waterproof: IP68

Unboxing

It's known that Olight has changed their packing cases recently: nice white carton box with smaller size and better organized. The warrior X comes with an Olight 3000mAh 18650 high drain battery (i believe it's a rewrapped samsung 30Q), a nice holster, magnetic charging cable and a tactical grip ring. No spare o-rings ỏ lanyard included.





Brightness parameters








This tactical grip ring is for replacing the anti-roll ring. You have to remove the clip as well in order to install it.






Olight also introduced 2 new items: the Magnetic Remote Switch and a gun mount. I'll talk about them in details later.





Impressions

It's BEAUTIFUL!! i'm not even overrating, its design is so clean and modern as well. The build quality and finishing is very nice as they always do on their other lights.

You will immediately notice these larger heat sink plate on its head. They should guarantee good heat dissipation performance when the light running on high.





This light is handy as well, not to big to carry around everyday. However, i find it a little uncomfortable carrying this light on my pocket due to the large head. I'm not a big fan of belt carrying as well so letting it stay on my backpack seems okay.





Using the light in this position seems challenging because of the hollow tail cap switch.



Compare to other Olight tactical lights. From led to right: Olight 18650 battery, Warrior X, M23 Javelot, M2R Warrior, M2T.





The Warrior X has then same size as the M23 Javelot and a a little bit heavier.



It weights 217g with the battery



The M23 is 20g lighter



Compare to the Olight M2R/M2T. These 2 are better idea for pocket carry



and for those who prefer flood beam



Only the tail cap can be unscrewed, the head is glued.



Nice and clean threat. It's also anodized



a better view of the dual layer body, looks solid as hell



the anti roll ring also plays a role in improving holding experiment




nice pocket clip, not to hard imo



The body grip is the same as on the M2R/M2T



the blue benzel is one of the iconic on a lot of Olight's flashlight



It protects the lens from scratching and for self-defending, breaking glass,...



the domeless XHP35 HI, perfectly centralized. I tend to judge a light negatively as soon as i see the LED is not in the right place as it should be.

Magnetic tailcap Switch

As i said, the Warrior X inherits the tailcap design from the M2R. First time users might find it difficult to cooperate with this switch but they would get used to using it soon.

It's can tail stand well.







this light charges via a magnetic cable which utilizes 5V/1A USB source



i measured the charging current by 5.14V/0.86A. It normally takes roughly 4 hours to fully charge to battery.





an indicator light is equipped, which will show red while charging and turn green when full

UI

The Warrior X has a very nice, simple and smart UI. 3 modes in total are divided into 2 Group:
- Group 1: High (2000 Lumens) and Low (300 Lumens)
- Group 2: High (2000 Lumens) and Strobe (2000 Lumens)

Group 1 is default when out of the box. Switching between 2 group is simple.

First Step: loose the tailcap



Next Step: tighten the tail cap while pressing the switch

While in group 1:

Softly-press the switch for 0.5s to turn the light on fixed low 300 Lumens. Press again to turn off
or softly-press and hold the switch for >1.2s to temporarily turn the light on 300 lumens, release to turn off



Fully press for 0.5s to turn it on fixed high 2000 lumens, press agian to turn off
or fully press and hold for > 1.2s to to temporarily turn the light on 2000 lumens, release to turn off


While in group 2:

Soft-press will turn the light on temporary High, hard-press will set to to temporary strobe, release to turn off.

Optional Accessories

as being mentioned above, 2 new accessories were also put on the shelf.





the gun mount is made of hard plastic and aluminum. Guns are banned in my country so i'll just so some pics of the mount itself



pocket clip need removing when using this mount





this remote switch has magnetic connection as well, coolest design i've seen so far. It only take seconds to connect/disconnect to the light.



it only kicks the light on constant/temporary High or temporary depending on which mode group you are.

i'm not a expert but believe that kind of UI are perfect for tactical operations.



In case some of you might ask, yes, it's compatible with the M2R.

Beamshots, Runtime and Working Temperature

Beamshots



On the Left: Olight M23 Javelot beamshot (6500k), next to it is the Warrior X (4700k). Very nice tint beam!

The Warrior X's hot spot is a bit smaller than the M23's.



that building is ~ 200m away



Olight M23 Javelot - Turbo 1020 Lumens





Warrior X on Low - 300 Lumens






Warrior X on High - 2000 Lumens






Warmer temperature offers better color rendering. I can't wait to test it in foggy weather.



That signal towel is ~ 150m away











300 Lumens are well enough for almost daily uses. The light offers good runtime as well as less heat working on this modes



While 2000 Lumens are for long range operation.

Working temperature

With the help of larger heat sink plate, this light can handle the heat very well. You won't even notice it warms up when running on 300 Lumens. On the other hand, the head gets to 56 celsius degrees while the body remain holdable.



When off



After running on 300 Lumens for 15 mins




After being left on high for 5 mins. The head got so damn hot, almost 60 degrees. Fortunately, thick head and large heat sink plate dissipated almost heat coming out, hence, the body was not to hot to handle. On other lights with thinner body, the heat transfer through out the light body.





The hottest point of the tube was around 35 degrees.

Runtime

I've heard lot of folks said the step down form 2000 to 600 Lumens in just 1.5 mins was so damn despicable. Well, the lack of the runtime chart on this product has lead to a big misunderstanding. Here is the chart that i've measuresd (using 3000mAh Olight 18650 battery).

Additional detail: This light is featured with vibrating power indicator. Olight out a small motor inside it which generate 3 unique vibration alert at =< 30%, 10% and 5%




It's clearly shown that the Warrior X run on ~ 2000 Lumens for about 2 mins after decreased to ~ 1000 Lumens. It continue putting out ~ 1000 lumens for more than 40 mins before descending and goes off at 77 mins. It's not bad at all!

The low mode, on the other hand, remains almost unchanged during the period of 282 mins before turning off.

77 mins ~ 1.3 hours
282 mins ~ 4 hours & 47 mins



In comparison with the announced runtime.

Conclusions

This light is sweet, i love the design and especially the simple but effective UI. It provides good neutral white tint beam, good throw and usable spill.

However, i hope Olight will improve the switch in the future design (make it more convex). Otherwise, it's one of the best compact-far reaching light out there
:twothumbs:

I enjoyed your well written review. Beautiful photography! Your neighbors probably don't appreciate your efforts as much as we do!

Good review, thanks for the graphics!
What about jitter when the battery is exhausted?

Thanks for your compliment . I'm finding a larger and darker place for the beamshot test, my neighborhood never goes completely dark due to the street lights

Modernflame said:

I enjoyed your well written review. Beautiful photography! Your neighbors probably don't appreciate your efforts as much as we do!

Click to expand...

opps, i forgot to mentioned it, just added some detail. Thanks
i would say this feature was quite annoying when i was doing the runtime test

desert.snake said:

Good review, thanks for the graphics!
What about jitter when the battery is exhausted?

Click to expand...

I'm in two minds about the switch also being one of the charging points. On one hand it is a very elegant feature, but on the other there really isn't much preventing a short circuit if a metallic object (a coin for instance) touches the tailcap.

It does look like a very nice piece of gear though. I'd like to see it compared to a Klarus XT12GT, or perhaps one of the new 360 tactical range.

I read that Olight engineered a new tail cap with a diode that eliminates the risk of a short circuit. Still, I won't be dropping mine into a box of steel wool anytime soon. Personally, I loosen the tail cap to break contact whenever I store the flashlight. This has the added benefit of preventing unintentional activation, as the switch on this one is a hair trigger.

I've short circuited it with a paper clip, nothing happned

wosser said:

I'm in two minds about the switch also being one of the charging points. On one hand it is a very elegant feature, but on the other there really isn't much preventing a short circuit if a metallic object (a coin for instance) touches the tailcap.

It does look like a very nice piece of gear though. I'd like to see it compared to a Klarus XT12GT, or perhaps one of the new 360 tactical range.

Click to expand...

Jesse_hoang said:

I've short circuited it with a paper clip, nothing happned

Click to expand...

Nothing obvious, maybe. I measured over 9 mA of short circuit current. That would completely discharge a fully charged 3000 mAh battery in about two weeks.

Modernflame, do you know how we could get a modified cap? I wondered why they didn't include a diode in the first place, but saw a couple of problems with it. The first is the voltage drop -- unless the internal charger or external magnetic puck has a boost voltage converter, it has very little margin as it is between a 5 volt USB charger and battery voltage. The second potential difficulty would be making the external pressure switch work. But I'm sure that at least the short circuit current could be reduced a great deal.

c_c

c_c

It isn't a good idea to deliberately short a lithium battery under any circumstances.

However, if the battery has a good protection circuit built-in then there is no real danger of damage from a short circuit. The protection circuit will detect the sudden high-current draw and cut off all power before any damage is done. In MOSFETs we trust.

I would recommend NEVER putting an unprotected cell in this flashlight. That way there isn't much reason to worry.

The good news...

I have a protected cell in front of me, it has a safety cut-off current of 8.5 Amps. If I were to sprinkle a tiny amount of iron filings to create a short circuit then consider what would happen...

Iron filings are good conductors but have very low mass and will heat up quickly when current passes through them. The battery will likely not even notice that there is a short, because even at 0.2 Amps the iron filings will be glowing yellow and evaporating into smoke in a few milliseconds. At that point the problem is gone.

Coins though. Coins are the real problem. A copper penny will happily conduct 40 Amps all day long, your battery (if unprotected) will get very angry indeed within a few seconds.

Very nice review.

I wish it had a normal tailcap, and no vibration. The vibration is what caused me to not buy this light when it came out on the flash sale. I do not need my flashlight vibrating my hand or the muzzle of my firearm.

The external contacts aren't connected directly to the battery, but to some internal circuit. There's no danger of short circuiting the battery via the contacts, just slowly discharging it. Using a protected cell won't change this.

c_c

Curious_character said:

Modernflame, do you know how we could get a modified cap? I wondered why they didn't include a diode in the first place, but saw a couple of problems with it.

Click to expand...

Sorry, not sure. I'm actually surprised that you can measure a current across the contacts. I saw on the other thread that you attempted to contact Olight. Very curious about their response.

Thanks for the thorough review.

wosser said:

I'm in two minds about the switch also being one of the charging points. On one hand it is a very elegant feature, but on the other there really isn't much preventing a short circuit if a metallic object (a coin for instance) touches the tailcap.

It does look like a very nice piece of gear though. I'd like to see it compared to a Klarus XT12GT, or perhaps one of the new 360 tactical range.

Click to expand...

That would be a good comparison. I have the 12gt. Feel free to send me a Warrior x for free[emoji16]

Modernflame said:

Sorry, not sure. I'm actually surprised that you can measure a current across the contacts. I saw on the other thread that you attempted to contact Olight. Very curious about their response.

Click to expand...

The only other time I contacted Olight support, they responded immediately - on Christmas day! I haven't seen a response to this query in two weeks, so it might have been zapped by a spam trap somewhere. I'll try again, but I'd still appreciate some other folks making the measurement to see if my light might be defective. 9 mA is easy and harmless to measure.

c_c

Curious_character said:

...I'll try again, but I'd still appreciate some other folks making the measurement to see if my light might be defective. 9 mA is easy and harmless to measure.

Click to expand...

Mine measured ~9.6mA. Although I've reported this along with one other findings to Olight back in December 2018, I don't expect them to update the product anytime soon. The current is too weak to lit up xtra-fined steel wool, so no worries there. But your concerns of continuous discharging by some fine conductive particles is valid. I had for their previous model (those "fire-starting" models) made myself some cover using moldable plastics to prevent such incident.

There are almost no more lights from Olight left that do not have proprietary batteries aside from a AAA light or so. My question is, and there is very little info with any review or UT video on the battery! Is this a proprietary battery? Can other non Olight batteries be used in this light? Can other non Olight batteries be charged in this light? I just read a thread where some guy can no longer buy the proprietary batteries for his Olight Seeker Pro even from Olight because they decided to stop making them, now the nifty feature of in light charging is gone. He may have chosen the light for that feature and at the least you're gonna pay that much more for that design and build of that feature. Who have tried to use other batteries in the Warrior X?

I have olight hdc's in mine...hi drain batteries like a vtc5d almost. They're hand picked for the x7 and they came stock in the warrior. They work in any light and any battery works in the warrior x

So the Warrior X can use and charge other high drain cells (15A+) in the light? It says they come with a 3000mah 15A discharge battery, that may be closer to a Sam Q30 cell perhaps. I've liked Olights in the past but I'm really not diggin the proprietary rabbit whole they are going down. Thanks for responding.

If I were to buy this light at some point I would like to be able to use and charge other batteries in the light.