Today I have the Olight Perun Mini, a smaller sized version of the Perun I tested earlier this year. The mini I have here is the limited edition in the Orange color which I love. It uses a 16340 battery and doesn’t have have proximity sensor. Thanks to Skyben for sending this to me to look at and review. Let’s take a closer look at this lightweight headlamp.
The Olight Perun Mini in Orange (Special Edition) https://amzn.to/32bCVlO
The Olight Perun Mini in Black https://amzn.to/3fu8cEs
The Olight Perun Mini in Black with headband https://amzn.to/3gVjsts
Special thanks to Zeroair for allowing me to use a few photos. See his review of this light at https://bit.ly/30iih0T
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Packaging & Accessories
The package stays consistent with Olights white textured boxes and color printing. Since this is a limited edition it shows the orange off nicely. On the back it’s full of features and specs.
Several accessories come with the Perun mini, first you get the light itself with the clip preinstalled, the proprietary Olight 550mAh battery, a lanyard and lanyard threading tool/clip removal tool, the MCC magnetic charger, and then the velcro duty patch and manual.
A headband is available for the Perun mini, but it’s an optional extra and I don’t have it here for review. I talk a bit more about it in my retention section.
Construction
The light is made from Aluminum and in this special edition anodized in a lovely bright orange color. I really do love the orange and it makes sense for a headlamp. It’s not going to be as durable as black as colored anodizing is typically softer but I am ok with that. A Lot of the design ques here are from the larger Perun. You have a flat magnetic tail with Olights recharging system built in, and the slotting for the included lanyard.
The body is the same milled pyramids that’s been on some other recent Olights, I like it, it’s a little different and a nice amount of grip. Internally the threads are anodized and fine square cut. There is a small spring in the head, and remember because this has Olights recharging the battery goes in positive down. The head itself trades out Olights typical blue accents for black. The clip and how it mounts is a little different on this and I mention that in my Retention section. The button is fairly large and sits flat in the head of the light. I had no issues with it getting pressed accidentally when pocket carried.
Size & Weight
I measured the overall length at 61.5mm, maximum diameter at 21.5mm at the head, and minimum diameter at the body at 20.5mm. Weight with the included battery and clip was 51.8g.
Size wise it’s very close to the Olight H1R, Wowtac H01 I reviewed last week, and about half the size as the Olight Perun I reviewed several months ago.
Retention
As an EDC in your pocket the Perun mini carries very similar to the S1R or the H1R. The one big difference is how the clip. It’s a little different design in how it attaches to the light. It’s a friction fit, and captured but the ends have a little bulb on them to help reinforce that. To remove it though you need a small tool like a screw driver or blunt butter knife to just get it started and then it comes off. It carries deep in the pocket, it’s dual direction and there is a good amount of space for material at the top of the loop.
As a Headlamp this is where things get interesting. It comes with a hoop velcro patch I will call it. On it is a tube that rotates, the clip of the light goes into this tube and it secures the light. The idea is this could be put on a hat that has a place for a patch or a uniform, plate carrier, vest, etc and wear it on your chest. None of these are things I actually have at the moment so for me it’s not the most useful but I could easily sew Velcro onto something if I needed but it’s really a specialized application.
As I mentioned earlier the traditional around the head strap isn’t included with this light, it is sold as an optional extra and I don’t have one this time. But from looking at ZeroAir’s review you can see in the photo below (Used with permission) it looks like a decent strap. Instead of having a silicone set of loops like the H1R Nova or full size Perun had it has the soft side of velcro sewed on. The idea is you take the patch mount and stick it on the headband but when your doing this it doesn’t cover all of the hook side of the velcro so it’s left there scratching your forehead. With the light being as light as it is I think the patch mount is just too big, and the best solution would be to just cut the mount up a bit where not needed. Or use the mount from another light, the mount from the H1R works fine.
LED & Beamshot
Olight has gotten into an unfortunate cycle here where on some lights for one reason or another they don’t specify the LED they are using. That’s the case with the Perun Mini, all we know is that it’s cool white but I would guess about 6000k so not too cool. If I had to guess this might be using the same LED as the full size Perun so maybe the Cree XHP 50.2 LED. There wasn’t any PWM that was noticeable to me.
The beam out of the plastic TIR optic is all mostly flood, there is a hot center but it’s spread out over most of the beam, and there is minimal spill out the rest. This works well as a shorter range headlamp and short range EDC, I have no complaints, Olight does TIR optics well. The optic itself is plastic and textured as a way to diffuse the light.
- Turbo – 1000 Lumens then step down to 250
- High – 250 Lumens
- Medium – 65 Lumens
- Low – 16 LumensMoon – 2 Lumens
Heat and Runtime
I did my runtime tests with the included Olight High drain 16340 battery. Turbo starts stepping down after 1 minute exactly suggesting it’s a timed stepp down and by 90 seconds it’s at 25% of relative output or around 250 lumens. Here is tuns out for 1 hour and 25 minutes where it hits the FL1 standard. The light keeps running out to 1hr 47 minutes before Low Voltage Protection kicks in at 3.156V. Maximum heat I saw was 38C at just at 2 minutes.
When I compared it to the full size Perun I was a little surprised at the results. The full size light doubled the amount of time in turbo (2 minutes) but high output although it was brighter it was exactly the same.Total runtime can be compared at 1 hr 47 minutes to 2 hr 47 minutes.
UI
The Perun mini features Olights standard UI. It does not have the proximity sensor that the full size Perun had. So when off long press gives you moonlight mode. When off a single press will give you low, if you keep holding the light will cycle through low, medium, high. Double press at anytime to get turbo, and triple click to get SOS. It’s a basic no frills, low feature UI that anyone can understand. I would love to see Olight make an advanced UI that’s switchable like some manufactures are starting to do now.
Recharging
The Olight Perun Mini includes a proprietary 550mAh 16340 battery. It has both the positive and negative on the traditional positive end of the battery. This is so Olight’s magnetic charging system functions when the battery is installed in the light. This is down on power slightly from what other rechargeable 16340 headlamps are shipping with by about 100mAh.
It also includes the MCC 1A charging cable, I do wish Olight would make the bases or USB side different colors as there are several version now of this cable. Charging for me took 1 hour and 5 minutes, and the fastest charging rate I saw was 0.75A, so just slightly over 1C for this battery. Charging stopped at 4.237V so slightly higher voltage then I would expect to see.
Pro’s
- Limited Edition Orange
- Nice deep cary captured clip for pocket use
- Mode spacing is pretty good, turbo is a big bump up
Con’s
- No LED is specified officially, it’s sad to see Olight go to this.
- The mounting system to use it as a headlamp isn’t a fully tested idea since it leaves exposed velcro where it’s likely to scratch you. That said it works well when mounted on your chest.
Conclusion
The Olight Perun mini is a nice update to the H1R as a light itself. I do wish they would possibly considering making a 18350 version to give double the available power without much increase in diameter. Maybe we could call that the Perun Short.
As for the mount I think the light would have a larger appeal with a better more traditional head strap with the silicone mount like what has been used in the past, and then include the velcro mount as the optional extra. Instead Olight decided to do the opposite and compromised the lights functionally to fit this niche market. From a sales standpoint it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me as a way to launch the product but I am just happy we have a nice special edition orange from Olight too.
Overall not a bad headlamp if the mounting options fit what you need or you have a silicone mount you can use from another light. It’s more expensive than some of the low cost, small headlamps I have reviewed this year but the beam is probably one of the best, if you don’t mind cool white. I can recommend it as long as you are aware of the mounting options.
Full Image Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/cp3VG8e
The Olight Perun Mini in Orange (Special Edition) https://amzn.to/32bCVlO
The Olight Perun Mini in Black https://amzn.to/3fu8cEs
The Olight Perun Mini in Black with headband https://amzn.to/3gVjsts