Olight Warrior Mini Titanium

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Titanium Warrior Mini TI (Limited edition) EDC flashlight REVIEW

Table of contents

Specifications

Brand / ModelOlight Warrior Mini Titanium
LEDN/A
Lumens1500 lm
Beam intensity9.025 cd
Battery config.1*18650
MaterialAluminum
Modes5
BlinkiesStrobe
ReflectorTIR optics
WaterproofIPX8
Review dateNovember 2020

UPDATE: 2022

Important note: there is a recall going on for this specific model, because some people forget to properly lock it out.

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2022/Olight-Ecommerce-Technology-Recalls-Flashlights-Due-to-Burn-Hazard

We recommend looking at the upgrade version: Olight Warrior Mini 2.
This flashlight has a proximity sensor installed, so this can’t happen anymore.

Coupon code: buy any light directly at Olight with our unique 10% discount coupon: 1lumen

The link is directly to the Warrior Mini 2, updated version, which doesn’t have this problem anymore.

(or Continue reading the review below)

INTRODUCTION:

I previously reviewed the original Olight Warrior Mini, and this is the Titanium (Limited edition) version. There are only 4,000 made of this type. The review is similar to the Olight Warrior Mini review with a few changes.

The Olight Warrior Mini is a 18650 type flashlight, with an included 3500mAh battery for max power and battery life. So, let’s move on and see whether the Warrior Mini is able to surprise me.

Package quality.

Olight’s approach is to ‘experience’ their brand from the moment you have the package in your hand. Since I received mine as a pre-launch product, mine didn’t arrive in a box. But I believe it should arrive with the following, just like with the original:

  • The Olight Warrior Mini flashlight
  • Lanyard
  • MCC3 magnetic charge cable
  • Manual, written in many languages
  • Proprietary 18650 3500mAh battery
  • Pocket clip (already attached)

Handling of the light

The light itself is pretty tiny. Especially if you compare it to other tactical flashlights. And I can truly put it as a tactical flashlight, albeit a small one. The knurling on the Warrior Mini is similar to the large Warrior X Pro and X Turbo, but smaller.

When you hold it in your hands, it feels pretty solid and not slippery at all. The deep carry pocket clip is sturdy, but haven’t tried to pull too hard. From my experience, they don’t like to be pulled to hard. And the clip can be reversed as well, meaning you can carry it 2 ways. It’s a 2-way pocket clip. Please check out all the pictures to give you a better understanding.

The Warrior Mini doesn’t have a tailcap. The body unscrews near the head, and that’s where you insert the battery. The switch is built into the body, and is not a separate piece you can screw off. Within the tailcap is a pretty strong magnet built-in. This is used to attache the magnetic charging cable to, but it can also be used to attach to anything made of metal.

The tailcap has a tactical switch and there is also a side switch. They can be used interchangeably. You don’t have to use the tailswitch to turn the light on. You can use the side switch for that as well. The tailswitch is a switch with 4 options. Momentary Medium, Medium, Momentary Turbo and Turbo. The momentary feature activates when you hold the switch longer than 1 second, either fully pressed till you hear a click for Turbo, or halfway for Medium. If you release the switch after 1 second the light will turn off. This is only in regular mode, there is also a Tactical mode, but I will talk about that in the User Interface section.

So you can carry it in a normal hand-down position with your thumb on the side switch, or in a tactical position with your thumb on the tailswitch.

Warning: Please always use the LOCKOUT mode when carrying it in your pocket. It could easily be activated and burn a hole in your pants.

Tailstanding: easy peasy. But just a tiny bit unstable.

Build Quality, Knurling, Threads, and anodization

If you own an Olight, you know that their lights are topnotch. My first Olight dates back to around 2013 or 2014, and at that time I wasn’t really that impressed with the quality. It was okay, but it felt so extremely light, that I found it a little awkward.

The Olight from the last couple of years are a different kind. Their build quality and especially their design is always unique. Of course, they have similar flashlights, like successors, but I’m talking about the details of each light. The build quality on the Warrior Mini Titanium is excellent.

Because it’s a titanium flashlight, the threads feel very gritty. You can’t really help that without using a ton of lubrication. This is what all titanium lights feel like. Olight produced 4000 of these lights, so they are pretty rare.

The only thing I was wondering, where to attach the lanyard. I prefer having the lanyard attached to the rear (probably because this has been the common place to do so) but the Warrior Mini doesn’t have an attachment point. You can attach the lanyard to the pocket clip though. A little strange I thought, but likely done on purpose. I’m just not sure how to attach it.

LED, LENS, BEZEL, AND REFLECTOR

Olight doesn’t really talk about LEDs, unfortuantely for diehard flashoholics. And that might be a good thing, because people tend to be picky. The average user can care less. It’s bright or it shines far, that is what many people care about, not about the “above BBL, below BBL, CRI, d5 c4 A1 etc..
That being said, Olight doesn’t give any clue, except for the mention of being High Power. It looks to me like a Luminus SST40, but the bin/tint/CCT is unknown.

The LED is centered within a TIR optic that makes the beam having a large hotspot and the corona is almost nonexistent. I’m not saying there is no spill, but the spill is so extremely smooth that you can’t really distinguish the most outer edge of the beam, it’s extremely smooth from the outside of the hotspot into no-mans land.

The bezel is very tiny and almost feels like hard plastic. There are very small ribs on the bezel that might be called an attack bezel. I wouldn’t call it that way though. The ribs are extremely small and probably not strong enough to break the glass. That is what attack bezels are mainly used for..

Dimensions compared to the original Warrior Mini

  • Length: 106.9 mm (  4.2”)
  • Head diameter:  23 mm ( 0.9 ”)
  • Body diameter:  22.15 mm ( 0.87 ”)

Weight: 

Olight Warrior Mini Olight warrior Mini Titanium
Weight empty55.8 gr / 1.97 oz75.3 gr / 2.66 oz
Weight with battery105 gr / 3.72 oz124.8 gr / 4.4 oz

Tactical Flashlights

Size compared to other popular tactical flashlights.

From left to right: Olight Warrior Mini, Fenix PD35 Tac, Thrunite TN12 v4, Nitecore MH25GTS. There are all 18650 flashlights, so you can see the difference in size. The Warrior Mini, is really tiny.

Image 2: from original Olight Warrior Mini and Olight Warrior Mini Titanium

Driver & User Interface:

Warning: Please always use the LOCKOUT mode when carrying it in your pocket. It could easily be activated and burn a hole in your pants.

The Warrior Mini uses 2 switches for operation. Both can be used interchangeably. If you turn the light on with the side switch, you can use the rear switch to turn it off, and vice versa.

The rear switch has 2 menu configuration.

Tail Switch configuration

Configuration 1 (default)

The default configuration has 4 options. Momentary on Medium, Medium continous, Momentary On Turbo, Turbo continous.

  • Short half press: Medium (continuous)
  • Short full click: Turbo (continuous)
  • Half press and hold (more than 1 second): Momentary Medium (release the button to turn the light off)
  • Full click and hold (more than 1 second): Momentary Turbo (release the button to turn the light off

Configuration 2: Momentary Turbo and Strobe only

  • Half press: momentary Turbo
  • Full click: momentary Strobe

There is no continuous mode setting. So a fast click doesn’t do anything. And a quick half-press does nothing either.

Side switch

  • Moon,Low, Medium, High, Turbo
  • (Moon and Turbo are not part of the default menu cycle)

From OFF:

  • Single-click:  to last used mode, mode memory, including Moon!
  • Double click: Turbo (not working with mode memory, unlike Moon and the default mode group)
  • Triple-click: Strobe
  • Press and hold 1 sec: Moon
  • Press and hold 2+ sec: Lockout

From ON:

  • Single-click: Off
  • Double click: Turbo
  • Triple-click: Strobe
  • Press and hold: cycle through the modes from low to high and back to low again.

Shortcuts:

  • To Turbo: Double-click from on or off
  • To Moon: from off: press and hold
  • To Strobe: Triple-click from on or off

Mode memory:

  • Yes, including Moon even when Moon is not part of the normal cycle. I like this quite a bit

Blinky modes menu:

  • Yes, Strobe.. a triple click with the side switch, or a Full press in Configuration mode 2

Low battery warning:

  • There is a small LED indicator inside the side switch. It will indicate the following
  • Solid green: 60%+
  • Orange: 10-60%
  • Solid red: 5-10%
  • Blinking red: below 5%

Keep in mind that the flashlight will not turn off until the battery reaches a certain Voltage. The low voltage warning doesn’t mean a Low Voltage Protection. Fortunately it’s built into the battery, but after the runtime tests, the battery was about 2.6V. A little on the low side in my opinion

Lock-out mode:

  • You can activate the electronic lockout mode by pressing the side switch for more than 2 seconds. It will briefly turn on in Moon and then locks out. Repeat this to unlock.
  • When you carry it in your pocket for a long period of time, I would still suggest unscrewing the body from the head a half turn. This will break any electric connection and you won’t suffer from any small parasitic drain, if there is any.

PWM:

  • It almost looks like there is some PWM in the lowest mode, but if there is, it’s neglectible, or not even present. It

Firmware / UI Conclusion:

The UI is great if you don’t mind the single click for off and Press-and-hold for mode changing. but you have direct access to Moon, Turbo and Strobe. And if you used Low or Medium, you have access to that mode within 1 click as well.

Batteries & Charging

Olight provides a 3500mAh 18650 battery with the Olight Warrior Mini. (Olight ORB186C35). The wrapper says 10A, which I assume, means a maximum discharge current of up to 10A. Not bad. Olight adds a high-quality battery with all of its lights I think. And that means they can guarantee a good working flashlight for all users. The battery, however, is a proprietary battery and that means you can only use this battery inside the flashlight. You can’t use a regular 18650 you buy elsewhere. You can use the magnetic charging cable (MCC3) to charge the battery inside the flashlight. The cable has on 1 end a normal USB port, and on the other end a magnetic adapter that will attach itself to the tail switch of the flashlight, to charge. You can still use a normal charger for faster charging!

I totally understand why they do this, but at the same time, I prefer non-proprietary batteries and charge systems since you can use any brand of charger or battery.

But I do like that they provide the full package. That way, you can even gift it to people who are not very technical and don’t know anything about Lithium-Ion batteries. So there are definitely some benefits with a proprietary battery and charge system. It also guarantees the highest possible quality and less warranty hassle.

The speed of charging is around 1.2-1.3A from what I saw. During charging a red indicator LED is visible on the charging cable. When the battery is at 95% charge, the battery will turn green. This means that the battery is not fully charged yet. If you have a USB tester, you can see that the battery continues charging when the light is green, at roughly 0.25A that slowly getting less.

You can see the green and blueish battery below. The geen one was delivered with the Titanium Warrior and the blueish one with the normal version.

Performance

Lumen measurements:

All output numbers are relative for my home-made Integrating Sphere. It is set up with an Extech SDL400 Lux Meter for measurements including a Kenko PRO1D ND-16 filter. The base measurement is done with a Convoy S2+ that has been tested at 255 lumens.

ModeManufacturer’s specs30 secondsstartup
Olight WarriorMoon10.000.00
Mini TitaniumLow1515.7615.76
Med120131131
High500533539
Turbo1500 lm14301565 lm

With my current setup it is very difficult to measure the lowest lumens. This is because of the ND camera filter I’m using. If I don’t use it, it won’t be able to measure past 3000 lumens. And for many lights I test, that is too low. Therefore, moon mode doesn’t have any readings, unfortunately.

Runtime:

The runtime test was done with the 50cm integrating sphere, including the Kenko Pro1D ND-16 filter and Extech SDL400 data logging Lux Meter.

I compared the original with the titanium version, and they look very similar. The runtime difference might be because of the battery, not sure.

You can see that Turbo slowly drops off to about 4.5 minutes. It then runs very stable at around 530 lumens for almost 3 hours and 30 minutes when it drops to about 170 lumens. That continues till the time mark of 4 hours and 17 minutes when it slowly drops in output. I turned the light off when the flashlight still produced around 5 lumens. When I took the battery out, the battery was at 2.569 V. Which is really low.

The manual says the following: 100% for 4 minutes, 33% for 205 minutes, 11% for 55 minutes.
What I got: 100% dropping to 33.7% for 204 minutes, 10.7% for 49 minutes. So their numbers are trustworthy.

High mode is pretty stable from the start at roughly 530 lumens. This runs for about 3 hours and 25 minutes when it also drops to 170 lumens. This continues for 4 hours and 25 minutes. From then onward it reduces output. I stopped the runtime again when the output was around 5 lumens.

Medium runs at around 140 lumens for 18 hours, when it drops to about 10 lumens in 1 hour and continues running for a few more hours on a slowly decreasing output. This time I left it run till the light turned off. This was more than 24 hours after I started. Unfortunately, I don’t know how long it ran on less than 1-lumen output, (if it did) since the sensor with the ND filter isn’t able to measure that. I just wanted to see how long it would last, and it lasted really long. Olight mentions a runtime of 18 hours in Medium, and that is what I also got.

Throw Measurement

Measurements were taken indoors with a professional Hagner E4-X Lux Meter. Moon mode couldn’t be measured as it was too low.

ModeCandelaMetersYards
Low100 cd20 m21.87
Med800 cd57 m61.86
High3300 cd115m 125.65
Turbo9600 cd196 m214.30
Turbo @30 sec9175 cd192 m209.51

Beamshots

Image 1+2: light colored wall, you can see the beam pattern, don’t concentrate on the beam color. This was just a quick shot on a whitish background, the second one on a real white background.

Images are used from the original Olight Warrior Mini 🙂

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.

OVERALL CONCLUSION

PROS

  1. High-quality flashlight and accessories (although not provided with my pre-launch copy)
  2. Great output
  3. Great runtime
  4. Very small Tactical Flashlight
  5. Short cuts to Moon, Turbo and Strobe
  6. 2 tail switch configurations

Cons

  1. Proprietary battery and charging
  2. No holster
  3. Press and hold for going through the modes
Author: Marco

5 stars: ★★★★★

I’m still impressed with Olight’s quality in terms of build quality but also the attention to detail. The output is excellent at more than 1500 lumens at startup. And I enjoy using the tail switch. Instant access to Turbo (and strobe if you’d like that). I still prefer this over a single side-switch flashlight. The Olight Warrior Mini gives you quick access to Turbo, Moon, and Strobe mode. I will rate this 5 stars

Olight Warrior Mini for sale

The Olight Warrior Mini has been replaced by the Mini 2, and now the Olight Warrior Mini 3

1lumen selects and reviews products personally. We may earn affiliate commissions through our links, which help support our testing.

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