Most flashlight and laser combinations are designed with a very narrow purpose like a weapon light or are so bad at being both a flashlight or laser that they are hardly worth your time, that is until the Olight Arkfeld arrived on the scene in its unique form factor. Thanks to FlashlightGo.com for sending this to me to look at for review. They are a newer overseas retailer, so check them out.
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Packaging
The packaging here is Olights normal design with a white box pull tab on top and a tray inside holding the contents. The exterior gives a good description, features, and specs. Included is just the light itself, the Olight MCC Charging cable, and the paper manual.
A quick note on FlashlightGo I originally ordered the neutral white version of this flashlight but a mistake was made and cool white was sent. They asked if I could just review it instead which I agreed to but said for a customer who had this happen they would replace the order most likely or offer a discount.
Construction & Design
The Arkfeld is made of aluminum and available in numerous colors at this point (Black, OD Green, Desert Tan, Blue, Orange, Lime Green, Pinwheel Gunmetal Gray) and a few other materials at one time I believe. Mine here is in blue aluminum. Its body isn’t round like we are used to on most flashlights, it’s rectangular with curves almost oval shape, and as a result, it carries really nicely in the pocket.
Upfront it has a thin plastic bezel that protects the glass lens that’s mounted and a bit flexible. On the right-hand side is the flashlight portion and on the left is the laser. I will go over the UI switch and how it works in the next section but know that it works well but isn’t very tactical. The clip at the rear is recessed but sits just inside the MCC charging port.
UI
The user interface of the Arkfeld is a mix of mechanical and familiar UI’s if you have used other Olight flashlights before. At the front end of the light there is a toggle that allows you to switch between Laser or Flashlight mode, it’s not possible to use both at the same time. From there the center button turns on whichever you have selected. The laser is very simple to operate as it only has 1 mode, on or off.
The flashlight portion uses Olight’s standard interface, and all of the normal shortcuts are there. Single press to turn on in the last used normal mode, Long press to increase the output of the 3 normal modes, Double press to go to turbo, triple press to go to strobe and there is even a moonlight mode if you press and hold from off. To turn everything off you just single press once. If the light or laser is already turned on and you want switch to the other you just rotate the toggle, no need to press the power/mode button.
One often looked part of Olight’s UI is the timed modes where when set in these modes the light will automatically shut off in at preset time lengths. The Arkfeld is no exception and has this as an option. Consult the manual for how to enable these, personally, it’s not a feature I really use.
Retention
Retention on the Arkfeld is one of the strong points. On the back of the light there is a long black spring steel clip held on with two Torx screws. This clip is very similar to a “steel flame pattern clip” but with much less of a bend, so your luck may vary on what else might fit here. The clip allows for a pretty deep carry, and plenty of room for the material to fit through it. I found it to be a good clip to carry and had no issues with the light coming on in my pocket accidentally. It was very comfortable to carry in my pocket think of something like an Olight Warrior that’s been squished a bit. The oval shape makes it seem less thick than it is, similar to an OTF knife.
Size & Weight
I measured the length at 4.36”, the diameter at the head at .65” and at the tail .752” width was 0.98”. The weight came in at 3.09oz or 87.7g. The light is IPX7 water and dust rated so it should stay operating in many everyday environments without an issue. Here are some comparisons to other lights of a similar size and things you might have to compare it to.
LED & Beam
The Arkfeld has both an LED flashlight and a green laser. The LED while not specified is mostly like an Osram P9. It’s available in Neutral White and Cool White. I have the cool white here and on my Opple meter it measured in at 6000k at 70 CRI with no significantly negative color cast on DUV. It is good to note here that there was now PWM to speak of on the normal modes.
The beam is a classic TIR optic, with a reasonably large hotspot, and soft spill. Good for those short and medium-range EDC tasks, perfect for this light’s design. There is a slight bit of clipping on the top and bottom due to the rectangular bezel.
Laser
The green 1 laser inside is a class 1 laser rated at a max output of 0.39mW, so not the brightest that’s offered to civilians by any means but plenty powerful enough for presentations or to bother your cats and dogs. This isn’t a laser where you can see the beam during operation but still powerful enough that you won’t want to shine it at people, pets, or aircraft.
LED Output
I did test the outputs on my Texas Ace Lumen tube and the results were as advertised for the most part. No complaints there to speak of. All measurements were taken after 30 seconds.
Heat & Runtime
Per my usual here are the runtime graphs I came up. Nothing here is too surprising. The light runs pretty cool hitting a maximum of 35C (95F) during the first 3 minutes of running in turbo. Turbo itself was good for 3 minutes of pretty stable output, and it appears it’s a timed step-down instead of temperature dependent. Overall runtime starting from Turbo was 2:10:00 and when I repeated the same test but in high you only gained about 8 minutes of additional runtime. I didn’t do any runtime for the laser portion itself as my equipment isn’t really setup for this.
Recharging
The Arkfeld uses Olights MCC3 magnetic recharging system with a connection at the rear of the light. The internally sealed nonuser replaceable 1050mAh lithium polymer battery charged from empty to full in 3:36:00 rather slow for such a small battery. The first hour’s charging speed peaked at 0.9A right at 1 C which is good. My guess is this could safely charge faster but the slower charging speed should help to promote a long battery life for the Arkfeld.
The light does have an onboard battery indicator via 4 onboard LED’s on the front just below the main UI controls. These all show green when full and slowly decrease when empty. Eventually, the last bar will go red then flash red when it’s just about to shut off. These show up well and are a nice touch.
Conclusion
The Arkfeld takes the idea of a laser and flashlight and puts it in packaging that’s pretty unique compared with what else is on the market. The execution here is good in my opinion. I like this rectangular almost remote-like form factor, it carries well, similar in size to an OTF knife. The controls here work well, are super easy to use and I had no accidental activations. I applaud Olight for offering it in neutral white in many colors too. Glad to see that starting to become the norm with Olight again.
The built-in sealed, non-rechargeable battery isn’t great, especially for the price here, it makes the light/laser consumable and not very sustainable. I always think this harms the lifelong value too since it does put a finite life on the product.
Overall I like the Arkfeld even with those cons, and the price, since it’s an Olight it’s available in many different colors and materials. That’s always a plus for me anytime I have color options other than black, especially in a nontactical light like this. I welcome this out of the box design even with it’s shortcomings and hope we will see more out of the box thinking from Olight in the future. This probably won’t be your only EDC flashlight but I could see it being a nice upgrade to the traditional laser pointer pen style for your pointing needs and have the bonus of being a solid flashlight too.