rookiedaddy
Enlightened
after more than 5 months of hiding in the void (Warrior X Desert Tan notwithstanding), Olight has finally come out to play again... they are announcing a few new models for the NRA shows, and this review will be focusing on the Seeker 2 Pro, a 21700 battery powered household/outdoor/vehicle flashlight that inherit some design elements they've done with the Olight X9R. (psst, the other 2 are hunting and weapon light...)
The specifications:
What's in the box:
honestly, I would rather they gives us a higher quality holster than the L-Dock. The L-Dock has a set condition for installation, you must make sure the distant of the L-Dock magnetic top is less than 1.2 meter from the nearest USB power source (minimum 1A) because that's the length of the MCC 1A cable. Of course, you could always use a longer (5 meter?) USB extender cable.
The 2 main differentiating factors...
... 3 x XPL (HD?) LED, my sample is less than 6000K CCT and projects a nice pure white beam.
... and the 21700-size battery, the first 21700 size flashlight from Olight.
of course, it's a proprietary dual-polarity design from Olight...
the actual measurement is larger than 21700, I measured diameter of 21.2mm and a length of 75.2mm, so it's essentially a 21750-size battery. Your normal size 21700 may not work in this Seeker 2 Pro due to the length and it needs to have button top (nipple-top to be precise) to make contact.
take a look at the top of the battery here...
this is a design from S1R Baton II ORB-16C05-10C battery... officially, this design elements is there to prevent potential shorts... but I think it serves more purpose than that... you need to go back to Olight to get your spare 21700 battery and you cannot charge this proprietary battery in normal cradle charger, none of my Xtar and NiteCore chargers can fit the battery in the cradle... and that brings us to a very sticky point for me about this Seeker 2 Pro, it takes ~5.5 hours to fully charge the battery from empty, 5.5 hours!!! Come-on Olight, you have had 3A rapid charger with R50 Pro LE Docking station, and most of the USB world already moved on to above 2A charging, and yet, in 2019, this is the charging speed we get from Olight engineering team?
Let's take a few more look at the Seeker 2 Pro...
finger-milled grooves, made from some kind of silicone material. pretty grippy.
Indicator lights, the left is for brightness, and the right is for battery status. the Moon and Low mode share the same brightness indicator. useful for initial checking of battery status, and after that, useless unless you change mode or switch OFF and ON again. No other way to activate the indicator except initial Turn-On or switch mode. Due to this, a marketing gimmick at best, unless they gives us a way reactivate the indicator lights.
Below are size comparisons to other lights:
size is very comfortable to hold, especially with the silicone grooves.
and here we have the UI Diagram:
It's the trial and tested, familiar Olight side switch UI.
following is my measured output:
The usual disclaimer: I do not claim the above measured lumens as authoritative nor an indication of over/under-stating the number given by manufacturer. It's calibrated against some known light output (e.g. SureFire, Elzetta, etc.) so take it with a grain of salt and just as a relative reading.
Next comes the runtime:
Pretty good runtime considering most of the runtime spent in the 1,300-ish lumens. That 5000mAh does shines in Seeker 2 Pro.
Zoomming in to the first few minutes:
and you can see it doesn't get the full 2 minutes in 3,200-ish lumens as claimed, but ~1.5 minutes.
Also, repeatedly double-clicking to go to Turbo after step-down will land you between 2,500 to 3,000-ish lumens and not the 3,400-ish lumens we get when the battery is freshly charged...
... and speaking of fully charged battery, the included MCC 1A (pictured above) charging cable is not able to fully charge the included battery to 4.20V but ~4.11-4.15V depending on your multi-meter calibrations. However, using S1R Baton II MCC (the slimmed down Magnetic Charging Cable), I get a light that is fully charged. This testing has been carried out multiple cycles and every time is the same results. So, the MCC cable are NOT the same despite Olight saying otherwise.
The good thing about not fully charging the battery is the battery should (in theory) last longer, unlike Olight's R50 Seeker Pro LE where the initial release of the charging Dock overcharges (actually it trickle charge) the battery as long as you leave the light at the charging Dock (the non-LE version of MCC cable doesn't do this) and break the protection at the battery and renders the cell to read 0V. So if you want to squeeze the last drop of juice you can get, use the S1R Baton II Slimmed MCC charger, else, use the Seeker 2 Pro included MCC 1A cable.
In conclusion
This is a good household and Bag-carry flashlight, I especially like the long runtime in the thousand-ish lumens and pure white tint. Now, is this a flashlight that's worth getting? Well... let's just say that you should watch out for the latest promotion from your favourite Olight retailer and locked in the promotion price if you really need a new toy from Olight.
The specifications:
What's in the box:
honestly, I would rather they gives us a higher quality holster than the L-Dock. The L-Dock has a set condition for installation, you must make sure the distant of the L-Dock magnetic top is less than 1.2 meter from the nearest USB power source (minimum 1A) because that's the length of the MCC 1A cable. Of course, you could always use a longer (5 meter?) USB extender cable.
The 2 main differentiating factors...
... 3 x XPL (HD?) LED, my sample is less than 6000K CCT and projects a nice pure white beam.
... and the 21700-size battery, the first 21700 size flashlight from Olight.
of course, it's a proprietary dual-polarity design from Olight...
the actual measurement is larger than 21700, I measured diameter of 21.2mm and a length of 75.2mm, so it's essentially a 21750-size battery. Your normal size 21700 may not work in this Seeker 2 Pro due to the length and it needs to have button top (nipple-top to be precise) to make contact.
take a look at the top of the battery here...
this is a design from S1R Baton II ORB-16C05-10C battery... officially, this design elements is there to prevent potential shorts... but I think it serves more purpose than that... you need to go back to Olight to get your spare 21700 battery and you cannot charge this proprietary battery in normal cradle charger, none of my Xtar and NiteCore chargers can fit the battery in the cradle... and that brings us to a very sticky point for me about this Seeker 2 Pro, it takes ~5.5 hours to fully charge the battery from empty, 5.5 hours!!! Come-on Olight, you have had 3A rapid charger with R50 Pro LE Docking station, and most of the USB world already moved on to above 2A charging, and yet, in 2019, this is the charging speed we get from Olight engineering team?
Let's take a few more look at the Seeker 2 Pro...
finger-milled grooves, made from some kind of silicone material. pretty grippy.
Indicator lights, the left is for brightness, and the right is for battery status. the Moon and Low mode share the same brightness indicator. useful for initial checking of battery status, and after that, useless unless you change mode or switch OFF and ON again. No other way to activate the indicator except initial Turn-On or switch mode. Due to this, a marketing gimmick at best, unless they gives us a way reactivate the indicator lights.
Below are size comparisons to other lights:
size is very comfortable to hold, especially with the silicone grooves.
and here we have the UI Diagram:
It's the trial and tested, familiar Olight side switch UI.
following is my measured output:
The usual disclaimer: I do not claim the above measured lumens as authoritative nor an indication of over/under-stating the number given by manufacturer. It's calibrated against some known light output (e.g. SureFire, Elzetta, etc.) so take it with a grain of salt and just as a relative reading.
Next comes the runtime:
Pretty good runtime considering most of the runtime spent in the 1,300-ish lumens. That 5000mAh does shines in Seeker 2 Pro.
Zoomming in to the first few minutes:
and you can see it doesn't get the full 2 minutes in 3,200-ish lumens as claimed, but ~1.5 minutes.
Also, repeatedly double-clicking to go to Turbo after step-down will land you between 2,500 to 3,000-ish lumens and not the 3,400-ish lumens we get when the battery is freshly charged...
... and speaking of fully charged battery, the included MCC 1A (pictured above) charging cable is not able to fully charge the included battery to 4.20V but ~4.11-4.15V depending on your multi-meter calibrations. However, using S1R Baton II MCC (the slimmed down Magnetic Charging Cable), I get a light that is fully charged. This testing has been carried out multiple cycles and every time is the same results. So, the MCC cable are NOT the same despite Olight saying otherwise.
The good thing about not fully charging the battery is the battery should (in theory) last longer, unlike Olight's R50 Seeker Pro LE where the initial release of the charging Dock overcharges (actually it trickle charge) the battery as long as you leave the light at the charging Dock (the non-LE version of MCC cable doesn't do this) and break the protection at the battery and renders the cell to read 0V. So if you want to squeeze the last drop of juice you can get, use the S1R Baton II Slimmed MCC charger, else, use the Seeker 2 Pro included MCC 1A cable.
In conclusion
This is a good household and Bag-carry flashlight, I especially like the long runtime in the thousand-ish lumens and pure white tint. Now, is this a flashlight that's worth getting? Well... let's just say that you should watch out for the latest promotion from your favourite Olight retailer and locked in the promotion price if you really need a new toy from Olight.
