Olight Marauder Mini

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Olight Marauder Mini specifications

Brand/model	Olight Marauder Mini
Flashlight category	Long-range / searchlight / work light / camping light
LED	N/A (cool white 5500-6000K) + R G B
Max. output	7,000 Lumens
Max. beam distance	600 meters
Max. beam intensity	90,000 cd
Battery config.	1*32650 (proprietary)
Onboard charging	Magnetic (proprietary)
Modes	7+7+4+4+4
Blinkies	Strobe
Waterproof	IPX8
Review date	November 2022

Wow..

I’ll start the review with that exclamation.

If you’ve been visiting 1Lumen on a regular basis, you know that we review most of the available Olight flashlights (and headlamps, and lanterns, and special lights, and desk lights etc.). lol.

But this time it’s something that really excites me. And that’s the Olight Marauder Mini. And since I reviewed the Olight Marauder 2, its bigger brother with 14,000 lumens, I just couldn’t pass this one.

Instead of the 14,000 lumens of the Marauder 2, this is claiming a maximum output of 7,000 lumens, including a Spot light features, and RGB LEDs.. not AUX! So you can get a ‘real red, green or blue’ beam. Not just for fun, like you have with AUX LEDs.

Just for some background information: I had to finish this review within 4-5 days of receiving it, so I did my best to include as many measurements as possible, but couldn’t do runtimes for all modes, due to the new battery setup and time constraints.

Anyway, let’s just right in!

Package quality.

Yup, great quality packaging, just like with all higher-end Olight flashlights. And this is what you can find on the inside:

• The flashlight: Olight Marauder Mini
• 32650 battery (proprietary) loaded inside the flashlight
• Magnetic Charging cable (MCC3)
• Lanyard
• Holster
• Warning and Manual

I’m almost shaking to get this review up and out in the world. The Marauder Mini is a special kind of flashlight, with high-quality materials, awesome, awesome features, and ….

sorry.. Back to the review.

Let’s start with how this little monster handles in person. Just like its bigger brother, you get a silicone coating that covers about 70% of the battery tube. This increases your grip immensely, and at the same time, won’t burn your fingers if it ever gets extremely hot! And with hand gloves that have silicone parts on the hand palm side, you get maximum grip.

The Mini has 2 switches and 1 lanyard attachment ring placed where the silicone doesn’t cover the flashlight body.

You’d have to understand why Olight chooses the way you have to activate the light. And that’s… safety. You have 1 dial knob (which you can also push) as well as a toggle switch, to switch between wide and throw (flood and spot). In order to turn your Marauder Mini on, you have to turn the knob 90 degrees and then push it.

The only complaint I have is that the symbols for throw and flood don’t make it too clear. I’d have the symbol for Flood with the lines indicating the direction of the beam, longer and wider.. And then the symbol for Throw with fewer lines, and farther out. (Just my opinion)

Because of its versatility, I can see this light used for many kinds of activities, including camping, walking the dog, or just use around the house. It’s small enough to fit a large jacket pocket, and large enough to use as your main go-to flashlight, especially considering the large capacity battery of 6500mAh.

If you like carrying flashlight with a lanyard, Olight included one for you. And if you don’t like using lanyards, you can also use the included holster. And lastly, if you want to make it tail-stand (like a candle) you can do that as well, because the bottom is nice and flat.

Olight wants to give you the best user experience, and also the best performance. That means they use high-quality materials and glue things up, so you can’t accidentally get inside the flashlight and ruin something.

The only thing you can unscrew is the tailcap, to give you access to the battery. Everything else is tight and secure. The tailcap is also protected with 2 silicone o-rings to keep the water out, and make it IPX8 waterproof.

The anodization is dark blue (Midnight Blue), and without any blemish. The threads are also anodized. Besides blue, the Marauder mini is also available in Orange. Just keep in mind that Olight usually adds more color options throughout the year. I’m pretty sure they will include a couple more options soon.

Warranty: from their website:

Orders can be returned for any reason within 30 days from the date the order was received. Returned items must be in the same condition, unworn and in the original packaging. Once you apply for a refund or replacement, we will send you a return label to return the item to us, no need to pay for the shipping cost. Free or promotional items must be returned along with the original item when being fully refunded.

Once your return is received, a refund will be processed, and a credit will automatically be applied to your original payment method. Please note that it might take 2-5 working days for a refund to show up on any bank statements. For your replacement, we will re-send a new item to you as soon as possible (within two weeks.)

For items purchased from third-party platforms within 30 days, we recommend you contact the original seller first, so they may take care of you. If you have any issues with them, please contact us.

Within 2 or 5 years of purchase: please contact our customer service at cs@olightstore.com. We may need your serial number, the date of purchase and a simple description about your issue. If your item needs to be returned for repair or replacement, we will provide you an RMA case number and application form to return the defective light together. You will need to cover the shipping cost, no need to pay for the repair.

It’s no surprise that Olight doesn’t mention the brand and type of LED used in the Marauder Mini.

But if you look at the front of the flashlight, you see a custom-built TIR optics, with LEDs in a circle around a slightly convex middle optic. So, you can see the LEDs very clearly! And if you look careful enough, you can also see the LED used in the center (for long-range).

For the outer ring of LEDs, they used an unknown LED to me. It doesn’t have any ‘special characteristics’ to distinguish them from any other LED. But the center LED looks exactly the same as was used in the Olight Javelot Mini. From a little research, it seems to be the following:

Rayten Lighting with the following product code: RT-5050CW-S72-1C1B-NVPE.

And why do you think they did that?

Well, if you see check out our Olight Marauder 2 review, you notice that the ‘throw’ beam is rectangular. And that was something, some people didn’t particularly like. I don’t mind it too much, and you can get used to it. But they chose the Rayten LED, which has a circular LES, and therefore produces a round beam!

The 9 LEDs in the outer ring, are not all regular white LEDs. 3 of them are different and are 1 Red, 1 Blue, and 1 Green light. And unlike AUX LEDs, they can really throw a beam. They also can’t be compared to flashlights that use filters to turn a white beam into a colored beam.

And Olight got rid of the proximity sensor, so the testing was much easier this time.

I used the Opple Light Master for testing, and tested L1 and L7 in both flood and spot modes. These are averages.

Flood L1:

• CCT: 5470K
• CRI Ra: 66.6

Flood L7:

• CCT: 5663K
• CRI Ra: 68.1

Spot L1:

• CCT: 5629K
• CRI Ra: 57.8

Spot L7:

• CCT: 6088K
• CRI Ra: 61.7

Dimensions: 

Dimensions Olight Marauder Mini	Millimeters	Inches
Length	130 mm	5.1 in
Head diameter widest	67 mm	2.6 in
Bezel diamenter	63 mm	2.5 in
Body diameter	44 mm	1.7 in
Tailcap diameter	47 mm	1.9 in

Dimensions are rounded to the nearest millimeter, and to the nearest tenth of an Inch.

Weight: 

Weight	Weight in grams	Weight in Oz.
Without battery:	316 g	11.2 oz
With battery	470 g	16.6 oz

Weight is rounded to the nearest gram, and to the nearest tenth of an Oz.

EDC Flashlights comparison

Size compared to other popular flashlights

Group 1, from left to right: Olight Marauder 2, Olight Marauder Mini

Group 2, from left to right: some common medium-sized flashlights: BLF Q8, Fenix TK35UE v2, Olight Seeker 3 Pro, Olight Marauder Mini, Emisar D18, FireFlies ROT66 v2

There aren’t many flashlights with the same shape or battery configuration, so I just included some comparison shots with other well-known flashlights.

The Olight Marauder Mini uses 2 switches. There’s 1 toggle switch, that let’s you swap between Throw and Flood mode (spot and wide beam). And the other is a bit more complicated. It’s the power switch, unlock switch, and mode switch.

By default, the flashlight is locked. And it will automatically lock 30 seconds after you turned the light off. To unlock it, and turn the flashlight on, you need to dial the knob at least 90 degrees to unlock, and click the same switch to turn it on.

Available modes:

• There are 7 levels of output, from L1 to L7 for the Spot and Flood beam
• There are 4 levels for the Red, Blue, and Green menu.

Available Blinky modes:

• Strobe

From OFF, locked:

• Half-press: nothing
• Single-click: nothing
• Double-click: nothing
• Rotate the knob at least 90 degrees: Unlock.

FROM OFF, UNLOCKED:

• Single-click: On to the last used setting
• Double-click: Turbo
• Triple-click: Strobe
• Press and hold: switch between White, Red, Green, and Blue.

From ON:

• Single click: Off
• Double click: Turbo (another 2 clicks will bring you back to L4, even if you were in L1-L3)
• Triple-click: Strobe
• Press and hold for 2+ seconds: switch to colored LEDs: Red, keep pressing to switch to Green, and Blue

Shortcuts:

• To Low: press-and-hold from OFF (needs to be unlocked)
• To Turbo: double-click from On and off
• To Strobe: triple-click from On

RGB colors:

• Press and hold the main switchfor 2+ seconds (when unlocked): switch to colored LEDs: Red, keep pressing to switch to Green, and Blue

Mode memory:

• Yes, it memorizes the last used output, except for L7. L5-L6 will only be memorized for 10 minutes! After 10 minutes, it will go back to L4.

Blinky modes menu:

• Only Strobe. You can access Strobe with 3 clicks from On and Off (when it is unlocked).

Low battery warning:

• A red indicator LED will show when the light is running out of battery. Also, the output will decrease when the battery is running low.

Lock-out mode:

• By default after 30 seconds

PWM:

• Not visible by eye

Vibration warning

• The flashlight will vibrate when you reach the highest output setting.. This is pretty cool, so you don’t need to keep turning that dial mindlessly.

Conclusion

Although the lockout feature is kind of a nuisance, I also understand they want to protect you from accidental activation and possibly hurting yourself.

One thing that is still not 100% perfect, is the dial knob settings. If you turn it too quickly, it just spins without changing the mode. I know this is probably tricky to improve, but that would make it better.

Olight introduced a new battery type (for them) with the Olight marauder Mini. And I’m glad to say that the battery is replaceable, so if you run out of battery while camping, you don’t need to wait 4.5 hours till the battery is fully charged again. Just unscrew the tailcap, and replace the battery.

The battery that is included is the Olight ORB-326C65, and it’s a 32650 type. This is basically equal to the side of a D-size battery. And just like all other Olight batteries, this is proprietary as well in the sense that the positive AND negative terminals are both at the front end of the battery. The capacity of this battery is 6500mAh, which is about twice the capacity of a regular 18650 battery, and at least 1000mAh more than the highest capacity 21700 battery.

Inside the flashlight, you can see there are 2 kinds of contact points for the battery, 1 for the positive terminal, and the other for the negative terminal. The tail cap also includes a connector to the negative terminal, but that’s mainly for charging. You can still turn the light on by pressing on the battery with the tailcap removed!

Unfortunately, I don’t have any other 32650 batteries around to see whether they will work in this flashlight or not. I wouldn’t recommend doing that, just for warranty purposes. So even though they may fit, it’s recommended to only use Olight batteries!

Olight includes an MCC3 magnetic charging cable for charging. On 1 end there’s a USB-A connector, and at the other end, there is a magnetic base with a positive and negative terminal. And because the large capacity of the battery, the charge time is also very long. In my testing, I measured 4 hours and 31 minutes from empty to full. And the charge current my USB meter showed was up to 1.9A, but most of the time it was below 1.8A, at 5 Volts.

Battery level indicators:

Next to the dial knob are 7 battery level indicators. But they are only lit for a few seconds after turning the light on. You can’t see the battery level when running the light. Not a big problem, because most flashlights don’t have that anyway. But it could have been interesting to see, without having to turn the light off.

Note: to speed my testing up, I used a little trick to charge the battery in a ‘normal’ battery charger. I added a small magnet to the positive terminal, so it could make contact with the charger terminals. That way, I didn’t have to wait 4.5 hours to continue with the next test, but 2.5 hours or so (which is still very long). I later realized it also fits in my SkyRC MC3000 charger without the magnet trick… FYI

I kind of think it’s a pity that Olight didn’t include the low battery vibration warning. You can still notice the output decreasing before shutting off, but I wouldn’t mind the vibration warning. Olight kept the low voltage shut down at a very conservative Voltage, at around 3.3V.. If they lowered that to 3V or lower, it should be able to run quite a bit longer.

Lumen measurements:

The output measurements in this review are based on my homemade integrating spheres, each equipped with an Extech SDL400 Lux Meter. For consistency and accuracy, a calibration light (Convoy S2+ with 249lm and a Convoy S2+ with 261lm) is measured prior to each set of lumen measurements.
For high-output lights, one of the lux meters uses an ND camera filter to prevent the lux meter to max out. This is either the Kenko PRO1D ND16 up till about 80,000 lumens or Gobe ND32 for anything above.

All of my readings were taken from a fully-charged Olight ORB-326C65, 32650 battery.

The measurements were taken manually at turn on and 30 seconds. The 10-minute numbers are taken from the runtime graph.

First measurement for Flood mode:

Mode	Specified output	Measured at turn on	30 sec	10 min
L1	100 lm	101	101	–
L2	200 lm	190	190	189
L3	400 lm	405	405	404
L4	800 lm	792	791	788
L5	1,600 lm	1,528	1,522	1,508
L6	3,200 lm	2,910	2,904	2,829
L7	7,000 lm	6,432 lm	6,327 lm	1,875 lm

These measurements are a bit surprising. We normally test Olight flashlights a bit higher than specs, but this time, it’s a bit lower, from Level 4 upward.

Olight Marauder Mini battery life and runtime graphs

The runtime test was done with the 50cm integrating sphere, including the Gobe ND-16 filter and Extech SDL400 data logging Lux Meter.

Mode	Specified runtime	Measured runtime (ANSI FL1)	Time till shut off
L1	35h 30min	–	–
L2	21h	20h 43min	20h 43min
L3	10h 50min	10h 46min	10h 46min
L4	5h 40min	5h 43min	5h 43min
L5	3h 05min	3h 05min	3h 05min
L6	3h 10min	3h 11min	3h 26min
L7	1h 52min	1h 55min	2h 14min

It’s interesting to see that L7 and L6 can sustain their brightness for pretty long before dropping. This is really good performance. L7 kept around 6000 lumens for almost 5 minutes before dropping. L6 kept just below 3000 lumens for 25 minutes straight. That’s what I call: Great performance!

Also, the runtimes are following the ANSI FL1 standards. Even after it reached the 10% threshold in L6 and L7, the Marauder Mini would run at a couple of hundred lumens for some time!!

For most of the runtimes I charged the battery with a normal charger, up to 4.20-4.22V. This is higher than the built-in charger charges. That would possibly give a bit of extra runtime.

After every runtime test, the battery measured at around 3.3 Volts.. which is pretty high, and conservative.

Mode	Specified runtime	Measured runtime (ANSI FL1)	Time till shut off
L7	4h 10min	3h 35min	3h 35min

This was quite a bit shorter than expected.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to test the RGB modes. If we get many questions or request, I might do this at a later date.

ANSI FL1 standards: The runtime is measured until the light drops to 10% of its initial output (30 seconds after turning it on). This does not mean that the flashlight is not usable anymore. The last column shows how long the light actually works till it shuts off. If there is a + symbol, it means that the test was stopped at that particular point, but the light was actually still running. This happens on certain occasions, with certain drivers, firmware, or batteries.

Olight Marauder Mini peak beam intensity and beam distance measurements

Measurements were taken indoors with a Hagner E4-X Lux Meter. For the sake of time, I tested them at 5 meters distance indoors. That way I could recharge the battery between testing the higher modes. I didn’t recharge the battery between testing L1-L3

Mode	Specified	Candelas Measured	Meters	Yards
L1 (flood)	–	400	40	44
L2 (flood)	–	775	56	61
L3 (flood)	–	1,650	81	89
L4 (flood)	–	3,200	113	124
L5 (flood)	–	6,275	158	173
L6 (flood)	–	12,100	220	241
L7 (flood)	–	26,700 cd	327 m	357 yd

	Specified	Candelas Measured	Meters	Yards
L1 (spot)	–	5,500	148	162
L2 (spot)	–	11,750	217	237
L3 (spot)	–	22,500	300	328
L4 (spot)	–	34,250	370	405
L5 (spot)	–	55,750	472	516
L6 (spot)	–	75,500	550	601
L7 (spot)	90,000 cd	99,750 cd	632 m	691 yd

I couldn’t find any figures for beam intensity, other than the max beam intensity for Spot L7 mode, which is 90,000 cd.

My measurements were again on the higher side for the spot modes (at least the highest mode). And it’s done with a different (higher quality) lux meter than the lumen tests. So I think we can assume that the specifications for the Spot mode were all a bit on the conservative side.

Extra info: Peak beam distance according to ANSI FL1 standards: The calculated value of distance in meters at which the flashlight produces a light intensity of 0.25 lux. (0.25 lux is about the brightness of a full moon shining on an object).

For the following beamshots, I used a Canon EOS 5D Mk2 with a 50mm lens. Manual settings: ISO1600, 1/4sec, F4, 5000K

The shed is about 65 meters / 71 yards away, and the reflective fence and treeline are about 200 meters.

The following flashlights will be compared:

• Olight Marauder Mini
• Olight Seeker 3 Pro
• Fenix TK35UE v2
• FireFlies ROT66 gen2
• Olight Warrior 3S

You can clearly see that the RGB LEDs are pretty powerful! Much better than AUX or filters.

Disclaimer: This flashlight was sent to me for review at no cost by Olight I have not been paid to review, nor have I been holding back on problems or defects.