Tag: olight lantern

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Olight Obulb Review (Warm White, Red, Magnetic, Lantern)

Olight has a new Mini lantern out called the Obulb and comes in 3 colors. It’s magnetic, floats in water, and has warm white modes along with red modes. Thanks to Skyben for sending this to me to check out and do a short review. 

 

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Pickup the Olight Obulb at Amazon from Skyben

Red: https://amzn.to/35pQyyl

Green: https://amzn.to/2LiMbOL

Grey: https://amzn.to/38vRFyo

 

Packaging and Accessories

Packaging here is standard Olight white box high quality. On the front and top are photos of the light on their respective side, on the back is your information panel with runtimes and outputs. Accessories include the Obulb itself, a USB MCC 1A charging cable, and a Olight self adhesive magnetic backer that acts like a coin too. 

 

Constructions

The obulb is available in 3 colors, a green, similar to the Olantern, a gray, and red that you see here. Red to me makes it look a lot like a pokeball I think. The dome is made from translucent polycarbonate and is reasonably thick. The bottom half is a rubberized plastic that provides some grip and it has the signature blue metallic strip in the middle. 

 

On the bottom there are 3 brass contacts for charging, and the internal magnet is strong enough to easily hold it’s weight up and be reasonably vibration resistant. 

Thanks to Oweban for sacrificing his Obulb so we can see inside, he provided me with these pictures to share what the circuit board, and battery configuration looks like. It’s a stacked design with the LED and Driver board being on top, a total of 8 LED, 4 for each color, Under that sits a 630mAh lithium polymer battery pouch, an aluminum tray, and then the board with the recharging pads and 2 buttons. It is IPX7 water rated meaning it can be submerged upto a meter for 30 minutes but it floats too. It’s drop rated for a meter too. 

 

Size & Weight

This is pretty small, somewhere between a golf ball and baseball size. It measures 54.2mm in diameter and 48.4mm tall. Weight is 56.4g and it is IPX7 water rated and floats in water. 

 

LED & Beam Shots

The Obulb has 2 LED colors, a warm white and a red. The warm white is a pretty warm, I would guess it’s about 2500k, the LED being used here is unknown, from looking at the circuit board it’s not square like most flashlight LED, it produces a good tone. Low is good for 3.5 lumens and high is 55 lumens. Low is enough light ot read a map, navigate a bathroom or low light tasks like that. High is enough light to prepare or eat a meal, navigate a small room with etc. It’s a nice even light. Red mode is rated at 7 lumens and fairly bright for a colored mode. 

 

Runtime

I did measure runtimes in the White and Red modes for this light. In High mode for the White emitter the light held it’s rated output very consistently through out the range, total runtime was 3:40:00, this is 40 minutes longer then what Olight rates it for. Low mode is rated for 56 hours of runtime and I didn’t test this due to the length of the test. Red mode is a similar story but a little more sag in the output, holding at about 90% relative output for the duration of 8:40:00, this is an hour and 40 minutes better then what Olight rates it for officially. Heat isn’t a concern here at all, with the light remaining room temp to the test during use. 

 

UI 

The light has 4 simple modes that are linear with no short cuts and does have memory. The button is on the underside of the light but that doens’t matter since you can press the top as well when it’s on a hard surface. It takes a reasonably hard press to make it come on though. Once on long press to change modes. The mode progression is Low White, High White, Red, Red Flashing. 

 

Recharging

Charing the internal 630mAh lithium polymer pouch battery is done on the bottom of the light with Olights MCC 1A charging system. Charging took 90 minutes with maximum charge rate of 0.6A so pretty much exactly 1C. 

 

Pro’s

  • Warm White from Olight
  • It Floats and is waterproof
  • Strong magnet allows it to be mounted on any magnetic surface.
  • Better then expected battery life

 

Con’s

  • Not something you will EDC probably or use daily
  • Battery is sealed an non user replaceable. 

 

Conclusion

I like the Olight Obulb. It’s not something I will use everyday but it can come in handy in a lot of different places. This is a nice simple light to give to young kids that is easy to operate but doesn’t have small pieces like many cylinder lights do. If you had a pool I could see tossing a few of these in to give ambient lighting at night, or using it in a shower to give you more light if needed. I may end up putting it in my car for winter to use that red blinking mode as a locator beacon should I happen to go off the road in a blizzard but I could also see it being nice on a bedside table, in a tent while camping etc.

 

I can’t help to think what the Olight Olantern would have been like with these white LED’s to create a nice warm tint. It’s a nice choice in LED and a surprise from Olights standard cool white. The price is also reasonable and the choice of colors is a nice touch. I am a fan of the Obulb even though I won’t use it all the time. 

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Olight Olantern Review (360 Lumens, Flicker Bulb, Olight Fan Request)

Olight Olantern Review (360 Lumens, Flicker Bulb, Olight Fan  Request)

Today I have the Olight OLantern, before you change to the next video, this isn’t a boring battery powered lantern. It’s the result of numerous requests to Olight, so lets see if they delivered what the fans really want or not. Thanks to Skyben on Amazon for sending me this to look at and allowing me to tell you the truth on it. 

 

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Pickup the Olight Olantern from Skyben on Amazon.

Green: https://amzn.to/3lQkiKh

Gray: https://amzn.to/2VXfb0x

Red: https://amzn.to/2VMjQlL

XANAD Case: https://amzn.to/2KABHqb

 

Packaging & Accessories

Olights packaging is the nicest in the production flashlight world, it makes me wonder how much extra goes to packaging. The lantern is a big heavy duty cardboard box with photos of the light on all 4 sides. Very little information is on the exterior. It opens up throughout the bottom and is a tight fit. It sit’s on the box of accessories which include the manual, a microfiber cleaning cloth, an extra long MCC3 charger capable of up to 2A, and the flame flicker bulb. 

 

Construction

The lantern itself is made from a polymer front top top bottom. It’s available in a gray, red, and the green you see here. A rubber texture has been applied to a few areas for extra grip, the top cap, and bottom tail cap. The middle section is a hard thick, dense polymer. The lens or globe is a clear acrylic and while it will scratch it seems to be reasonably scratch resistant. It has a bit of a reflector built into the to help distribute light. This globe twists off from the body to allow you to swap out the emitter from cool white to the flickering flame, and there is a oring around this connection. Inside around the emitter is aluminum as is the blue ring around the exterior.

The electronic button is in the front and and has a slight backlit edge. This servers as a power indicator and helps you find the light in the dark. The light is motion sensitive so once you pick it up it comes on. 

The bottom rubber piece is scalloped and relieved internally to allow the light to charge while standing up with ease. There are 3 screws in the bottom that allows the light to come apart fairly easily. While the battery isn’t designed to be user replaceable it is quite easy to remove it. It connects to the circuit board with spring loaded pins. There was some debate early on if this was a rebranded product or an Olight original design and after looking inside I am confident it’s an Olight design, as all the circuit boards do have Olight copyrights on them. Internally its pretty simple design. 

 

Size & Weight/Competition

Length with the handle folded in was 135mm, with it unfolded 191mm, maximum diameter on the base was 65mm. I measured the weight at 346.5g. Water rating is only IPX4. So it can handle splashes from all angeles but no more.

A lot of people will compare the Olight Olantern to the BLF/Sofrin LT1 because the lights end up being near the same price. The Olantern is lighter, and smaller, with less features, a more simple but less useful UI, and longer charging time. The two are in different leagues really. The Olantern is probably better to hand to a non enthusiast and in terms of weight but in almost all other aspects the LT1 in my opinion is the better lantern. 

 

Retention

The lantern has a handle that is a metal hanger and coated in the same rubberized coating, at the top it has a plastic piece with a dip in it. This looks a little funny but is actually really useful, as it allows you to hang the light on a wire or rope and not have it fall off. I could see this being used in a tent, or with a rope strung between a few trees while camping etc. 

I do enjoy a case for my BLF LT1, and the OLantern will fit in the one I have for my LT1 here but with a good amount of extra space leftover. The XANAD case does double duty well.

 

LED & Beam

The Olantern has 2 LED Modules, first the primary is a cool white module with 3 output settings. No emitter or tint data is given for either. It’s quite cool white my guess is 6500k or cooler. The beam is pretty even but if you wanted to diffuse it even more I have seen people put thin paper inside the globe for more diffusion. 

The other is the flame module, it’s 1 mode only and flickers, and is quite warm, with an orange tint. I really wish this had more output and 3 modes like the main module did. 

 

Olight lists the official outputs as the following.

  • High 360 lumens
  • Medium 120 lumens
  • Low 30 lumens
  • Flaming Module 1 Lumen

 

Heat & Runtime

I tested runtime on the highest output on the main cool white module, and got 6:55:00 so a little better  then what it’s rated for. During this time it decreased in output ever so slightly but ran this entire time at 90% of relative output which is good. It does get a little warm during use, especially around the blue metal band, with peak temps in my uncooled environment at 39C. This was around the 2 hour mark.

 

My flaming module runtime test fell a tad short of the claimed 80 hours of runtime. I recorded only 46:42:00, due to the length of time this took I didn’t run this one again to see if my results improved. 

 

UI

The UI here is very simple. Single press turns the light on to the last mode it was used in. Long press to go to the next mode, and mode progression is L, M, H. There is no short cut to the highest or lowest output. The flaming module has only one mode, so it’s just on or off.

 

One kind of neat and useful feature is the illuminated halo around the side switch, it reacts to motion to help you find it and to save power, so if you bag was to move it was in or you pick it up but can’t find the button in the dark it will start glowing a dim green so you can find it. 

 

Recharging & Power

This light runs off of a proprietary battery pack consisting of 4x 1900mAh 18500 batteries for a total capacity of 7600mAh. This is a custom battery pack and is designed to be non user replaceable. As mentioned above it’s quite easy to get into the light however though so if Olight made this battery available as a replacement I think it’s something the average person could replace. Recharging is done via the Olight magnetic MCC3 charger you get on recent Olights. It will operate while charging, and has the standard green when charged, red when charging. 

 

Charing time here is very long, from empty where the light shut off I measured it taking a full 8:30:00  to recharge, Peak charging speed I saw was 1.38A. This is a pretty conservative recharge rate. If you were charging off solar power it would be best to top up then expect to get a full charge in a day in most places. Comparing this to my BLF LT1 which had a capacity of 12,000mAh but charged in 10:15:00. This is still along time but also a battery that’s 4,400mAh larger.

 

Areas for Improvement

I see 3 major areas that olight can make improvements to on the next Olantern. The first is the waterproofing, this is only rated for IPX4 which means it can repel splashes from any angle but more then this may cause problems. This means it’s ok in the rain but isn’t to be submerged. The lantern only has one Oring between the globe and module, this surprised me for the price point the lights at, and Olights usual good build quality. 

 

LED Tint – This shouldn’t surprise anyone if you know Olight you know they like that cool white tint. They might say that’s for the best performance, or most amount of lumens but in this case neither are the most important, quality of light and runtime are the big things you want for area illumination. With the replaceable “bulb” design Olight could easily come out with an addon or have given people the choice. Even better make the tint variable like the BLF LT1. 

 

LED Storage – The flaming “bulb” is fun, but it’s output doesn’t make it super useful for more then just ambiance. The problem I see is there is no way to attach the extra blub to the light, or store it, so I see it is more likely to get lost. Hopefully version 2 corrects this. 

 

Conclusion

Lanterns are not something you think you need, till you have one and then if you are like me you will find yourself using it more and more. It’s great for camping but also if you lose power frequently or live in an area with storms. This is great for those areas getting hit by tornadoes and hurricanes or this time of year blizzards. 

 

At first I wasn’t impressed with the design here from the photos, I didn’t find the light attractive and was kind of put off by the mostly polymer construction, but once I got it in hand it felt better built than I was expecting. That said this is a space that has competition in it, not only from other lantern or lantern like products but also from silicone cones to put on top of your existing flashlights to act as a diffuser. All of those make the normal asking price here hard to swallow in my opinion. It’s a useful amount of light and it feels solid in the hand but I just had higher expectations for the normal asking price.

I don’t think this is the light that the hard core Olight fan was asking for but it’s not a bad place to start. Hopefully Olight decides to make some revisions and come out with a version that is has the ability to shift the tint, swap in other bulbs, is more water resistant, and is a better overall value. If they do that I think it will appeal to more enthusiasts and be the light that the hardcore fans really wanted. Until then you have a pretty well built light for the mainstream at a high price point when it’s not on sale.