Today I have Olights newest compact mountable light the Baldr Mini that features an integrated green laser designed for your smaller weapons. Thanks to Skyben for sending this to me to look at a review.
Watch this review on YouTube:
Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liquidretro/
Join the Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LiquidretroReviews/
Enjoy this review? Buy me a Coffee/Beer: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Liquidretro
Pickup the Olight Baldr Mini at Amazon
Black: https://amzn.to/3aKgxEr
Desert Tan: https://amzn.to/3hn9OkM
Packaging & Accessories
The Baldr Mini comes in a standard high quality Olight white cardboard box. For a tactical product it’s a very non tactical classy box. Inside you get the light itself, the MCC (Special) magnetic USB Charger, and the adjustable rail insert, screws, and a small torx wrench to make this change to accommodate your mounting needs. By default it comes with the Glock sized adapter installed.
Construction
The Baldr Mini follows similar design ques from Olight’s other pistol mount lights, the one it’s most similar to is the PL-Mini 2 Valkrie 2 which I also did a review of. The Baldr mini is Olights line of lights that feature a laser integrated into them. The light is made from aluminum and features the same mounting system as The Valkrie 2, which has a nice quick disconnect tool less lever, and then a rail design that allows the light to slide forward or backward to get it positioned exactly where you want it. This is one of the better mounting designs in my opinion from the different weapon lights I have tried.
On the back you have very similar buttons that hinge down that Olight has had since the PL-Mini. They are silent and work pretty well for my fingers. Your other control is a slider under these buttons that allows you to select between laser only on the far left, laser + light in the middle, and light only on the right. On the far extremes this slider doesn’t stick out to catch at anything either. At the front you have a larger 17.8mm glass lens with a smooth short reflector. What’s different here is the laser is integrated right above the main LED so there is a notch out of the reflector.
The depth of the light is 4mm greater then the PL-Mini 2 to accommodate that laser which is ok with me. At the bottom you have the magnetic Olight charging base, the polarity on the magnet here is different from standard Olight flashlights, and require the use of the “Special” MCC chargers. On the side panel you do have 2 adjustment screws to adjust the aim of the laser to match the Point of impact. You have elevation and windages adjustment screws. For me I didn’t have to adjust these much to get them close to shoot at my indoor range.
Size & Weight
I measured the length here excluding the buttons at 48.75mm, width at 27.25mm, and height at 36mm. I measured the weight at 86.1g. This is 13..1g more then the PL-Mini 2. The Baldr Mini is IPX4 water rated.
Small bit on retention, due to this lights slightly larger size it won’t work with holsters you already own for other Olights.
LED, Laser, and Beam Shots
The exact LED in use here isn’t specified but I can tell you it’s cool white with a maximum of 600 lumens and capable of throwing out to 130 meters. I would guess tint is about 6000k. The beam is slightly smaller then the PL-Mini 2. I expected beam distortion due to the hole in the lens from the laser but it’s really very minimal and only noticeable at short distances of less then 10 feet.
Runtime
Internally the light has a built in non user replaceable 230mAh battery. I did 3 runtime tests, in all 3 modes. So for the light only mode the light lasted out to 48 minutes, you got near peak runtime till 0:2:30 minutes and it looks to have a timed step down to around 18% which is substantial.
Light only mode looks like a similar curve but just longer, it adds another almost 20 minutes of runtime for a full runtime of 48 minutes. I used the same techniques to measure the laser only mode, and while I don’t know that I trust the output graph to measure % of relative output, I do trust the runtime data. Total runtime was 2:28:00.
UI
The user interface here is very simple, with the two paddle switches at the rear of the light doing the same thing. There is no strobe mode on this light. On the very bottom you have a 3 way slider switch to allow you to select between Laser only on the left, laser + Light in the middle and Light only on the right. This switch has nice positive detents and I don’t think it will easily slide on accident.
Recharging
Recharging the internal 230mAh lithium polymer battery is accomplished via the bottom magnetic recharging system that Olight uses on most of it’s other lights. However here the magnetic polarity is reversed like it was on the PL-Mini, and PL-Mini2. I believe this is due to the small battery and slower charging rate it requires. Charging time from empty took a little over 40 minutes to complete with the max charging speed at 0.35A.
Conclusion
My conclusion on the Olight Baldr Mini is that I appreciate the addition of the laser for a minimal penalty of weight and added thickness. I thought the laser in the lights main reflector would negatively impact the white light output here but it’s really minimal and you don’t notice it. For me it will replace where I was running the PL-Mini2 on my Glock 19 and the Baldr Mini will go on instead. If you plan to put this on a carry gun or something you need a holster for make sure you can find holster support before purchasing. Hopefully Olight will get more holster manufactures onboard for future lights in 2021.
I will have a link to where you can pick this up on Amazon from Skyben in the description below. If you have any questions or comments please let me know in the comments below and I will see you on the next video review!
Pickup the Olight Baldr Mini at Amazon
Black: https://amzn.to/3aKgxEr
Desert Tan: https://amzn.to/3hn9OkM