Olight Warrior X Pro

Olight Warrior X PRO tactical flashlight review

Introduction:

Olight produces many, many flashlights per year. The Warrior X PRO is the successor of the Olight Warrior X. The X was a 18650 battery-type tactical flashlight, while the X PRO uses a dedicated 21700 Olight battery. What do you mean by a dedicated battery? Continue reading!

The Warrior X PRO packaging looks fantastic. It feels hefty and it looks gorgeous. You can directly see they didn’t produce it on a whim. They designed this baby into the smallest details. Oh, did I tell you that it has a vibrating low-battery indicator?

What you’ll get inside the box:

• Olight Warrior X PRO flashlight
• Lanyard
• Holster
• TGR ring (Tactical Grip Ring)
• Magnetic USB charge cable
• User manual

The only thing I’m missing is spare O-rings.

Olight Warrior X PRO specifications

Brand / Model	Olight Warrior X PRO
LED	CREE XHP35-HI
Lumens	2250
Beam intensity	90,000 cd
Battery config.	1*21700 (dedicated)
Material	Aluminum
Modes	2
Blinkies	0
Reflector	smooth
Waterproof	IPX8
Review date	April 2020

Handling of the X PRO

The X PRO only uses 1 single switch, located at the tailcap, for power and mode changing. This means that you have to change the position of your hand every time you want to change modes. Fortunately, it only has 2 modes.

The switch feels a little strange compared to regular flashlights. A half-press will put the light into Low mode (which is actually more of a medium) and a full press (click) will turn the light on High.

By default, a tactical ring and pocket clip are attached. You can’t use the pocket clip without the tactical ring, but you can do visa versa.  Olight included a second ring, which they call a ‘Tactical Grip Ring’. This ring is made of a kind of rubber to increase grip. This ring, however, doesn’t work with the pocket clip. It’s either the default ring with its pocket clip or no pocket clip at all.

I like the holster a lot. A few things that drew my attention.

1. It doesn’t use velcro tape but a magnet to close the flap.
2. It has an opening on the bottom. This is probably a safety feature?
3. It’s made of very thick material, almost plastic-like. Unlike other holsters this one can’t be folded up. It’s too stiff to do this.

I will talk about the magnetic charging system below.

Build Quality, knurling, threads, and anodization

There is really nothing to complain about the build quality. Even the packaging looks extremely detailed and specially designed. The same goes for all accessories and charging systems. Nothing looks like this could be a cheap flashlight.

It doesn’t have the typical knurling on any part of the light. The tailcap and head design look pretty impressive. All edges are rounded and therefore not sharp. The bezel is not removable, unfortunately.

Anodization looks really good across the light. I usually don’t like very shiny anodization on flashlights, but on the X PRO it adds a bit of a premium feel. Besides the standard black finish, they also have 2 special edition colors, namely OD Green and Desert.

The tailcap is the only part you can unscrew.  That’s why there is only 1 set of threading I can talk about. The threads came lubed like crazy and because of that, the tailcap screws really smoothly.

LEDs, Lens, Bezel, and Reflector

Olight doesn’t specify what kind and what type of LED it uses. But at Olightworld they answered a question and said they use a Cree XHP35. And since the LED doesn’t have a dome, this must the XHP35 HI (high intensity). The beam is definitely on the greenish side of things. But that might just be a problem for whitewall warriors LOL.

What I like is the details of the design. The bezel is a blue and crenulated strike bezel, which makes it easy to spot amongst other flashlights while still having a black anodized body. You can’t unscrew the bezel, unfortunately. Olight adds glue on all their lights (Loctite) so you can’t take it apart without force or a great amount of heat. This can be a pro and a con at the same time. A con for people who want, or need to replace their LED, and a pro since the company can be sure nobody opened it up and void their warranty. The lens is kept in place by a glow-in-the-dark O-ring. It’s kind of weak though, but there is at least a little bit of glow.

The reflector is smooth and is supposed to push the maximum beam intensity up to 90,000 cd. This is quite a performance, so I’ll do my best to test this.

Dimensions:

• Length: 149mm (  5.8″)
• Head diameter: 39mm (  1.54″)
• Body diameter: 23.8 mm ( 0.94″)

Weight: 

• With battery:  238.7 g (  8.42oz)

Size comparison with other Tactical Flashlights

Compared to some of the best tactical flashlights.

From left to right: Wuben E10, Fenix PD35 TAC, Fenix PD36R, Thrunite TN12 v4, Olight Warrior X PRO, Nitecore MH25GTS, Fenix TK22 2.0, and Jetbeam TH20.

You can easily see its size difference from the other tactical lights, but it’s not extremely long.

Driver & User Interface:

The Olight Warrior X PRO uses a simple but rather unique driver/switch.

There are 2 main modes, Turbo and Low. Low is actually not really low, but 300 lumens.

Modes:

• Low, Turbo

From OFF:

• Half-press: Low
• Full-press, single-click:  Turbo
• Half-press and hold: Low (temporarily.. release switch to turn off)
• Full-press and hold: Turbo (temporarily, release switch to switch off)

From ON:

• Half-press: Off
• Single-click:  Off

Blinky modes menu:

• None

Low battery warning:

• Built-in vibration system.
• Battery <30% = vibrate every 5 minutes
• Battery <10% = vibrate every minute
• Battery <5% = vibrate every 10 seconds

Lock-out mode:

• No

PWM:

• Not visible by eye, so that is what counts.

Firmware / UI Conclusion:

• Not sure if I like this UI. I prefer something more distinct. Currently, when you press the switch too long, and you release it, the light turns off. I rather have a full and distinct click and not this kind of Long-press =  temporary mode.

Batteries and charging:

Here comes a little bummer, in my opinion. Olight uses a dedicated battery and charge system. That means 2 things. 1: you can’t charge the battery in a standard Lithium-Ion battery charger. 2: you can’t replace the Olight 21700 battery with a regular 21700 battery.

The 21700 battery included is an Olight ORB-217C50, Lithium-Ion battery with 5000mAh. Which is a lot more juice than a regular 18650 battery but only slightly larger. 21700 batteries were introduced around 2018 or so. This means they are still relatively new. The maximum mAh for a 18650 cell is currently around 3600mAh. So the 21700’s 5000mAh is a significant increase in capacity.

Olight includes the MCC3 (magnetic charging cable), and the X PRO doesn’t accept any older MCC’s. Another flaw, in my opinion. I don’t like to rely on one charging cable. What happens if I lose it? I can’t charge the battery and can’t use the flashlight. I can understand Olight that they want to decrease the likelihood of damaging their lights by using bad batteries or a bad charger. This also means that you can’t use an adapter to use a 18650 battery. That can be both a pro and a con.

The charge speed is pretty good, even on my 2A wall charger. It draws roughly 1.75A on that charger, but it should be able to charge at a maximum power of 2A. While charging, a little red LED lights up, and it turns green when it finishes charging.

Edit: the following part about parasitic drain should be taken with a grain of salt because of the way the battery and tailcap are connected. You can’t measure amperage the ‘usual’ way. In standby mode, the battery seems to be pulling 4.7mA. If this is correct, that is pretty high. It would take about 1064 hours to discharge a 5000mAh battery. That is about 44 days.

Performance:

I took all of my readings with a fully charged Olight ORB-217C50 battery.

Amp measurement:

• I couldn’t get a reading. Probably because of this type of switch.

Lumen measurements:

All output numbers are relative for my home-made Integrating Sphere. It is now set up with an Extech SDL400 Lux Meter for measurements with a Kenko PRO1D ND-16 filter. The base measurement is done with a Convoy S2+ that has been tested at 137 lumens.

Mode	Specs	I measured:
High	2250	2334 lm
Low	300	307 lm

My measurements were pretty close, but still a little higher than the specs.

Runtime:

And a close up of the first 4 minutes:

From the runtime graph, we can see that Turbo starts dropping after about 1.5 minutes and slowly decreases till 1100 lumens at 2.3 minutes. Around 22 minutes the next drop to about 980 lumens. A big drop at 1.5 hours to 600 lumens. Another drop at 1 hour 40 minutes to 300 lumens. At 2 hours and 14 minutes, the Olight Warrior X PRO turns completely off. The total runtime on High is 2 hours and 14 minutes.

The first Low battery vibration was felt after 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Low is a very steady 300+ lumens for 7 hours and 44 minutes.

Throw measurement:

Measurements were taken with a professional Hagner E4-X Lux Meter. I got the following measurements:

• Indoors (5m) Turbo:  101,000 cd =  636 meters  / 2085 feet / .39 miles
• Indoors (5m) Low: 13,500 cd = 232 meters / 762 feet

21700 tactical flashlight comparison

Single 21700 tactical flashlights measured: These numbers are NOT from the specifications but measured by our team.

Flashlight	Battery	Max Output (lm)	@30sec (lm)	Candela (cd)	Distance (m)
Acebeam L18	Acebeam IMR21700NP-510A	1249	1051	215,500	928
Acebeam L19	Acebeam IMR21700NP-510A	1378	1242	430,300	1312
Acebeam L35	Acebeam 5100 mAh	6189	5609	57,000	477
Brinyte T18	Brinyte 5000	556	–	144,200	759
Cyanksy K3	Cyansky BL12150U	1456	–	95,100	617
Cyanksy P25	Cyansky 5000	4236	3300	11,275	212
Fenix PD36 Tac	Fenix ARB-L21-5000U	2590	2079	18,675	273
Fenix TK16 v2	Fenix ARB-L21-5000U	2657	2222	40,900	404
Fenix TK22 TAC	Fenix ARB-L21-5000U	2742	2234	72,250	538
Fenix TK22 v2	Fenix ARB-L21	1622	1592	53,000	460
Jetbeam PC20	Samsung 40T	1800	–	13,900	236
Nitecore MH12S	Nitecore NL2150	1770	–	30,400	349
Nitecore MH25S	Nitecore NL2150	1979	1850	68,400	523
Nitecore P10iX	Nitecore NL2150HPi	4223	566	8,700	187
Nitecore P20i	Nitecore NL2140i	1690	–	36,000	379
Nitecore P20i UV	Nitecore NL2140i	1785	1699	29,400	343
Nitecore P20iX	Nitecore NL2150HPi	4119	1342	16,000	253
Olight Warrior 3	Olight ORB-217C50	2598	2428	25,500	319
Olight Warrior M2R PRO	Olight ORB-217C50	2088	1985	28,000	335
Olight Odin	Olight ORB-217C50	1999	1884	25,750	321
Olight Warrior X Pro	Olight ORB-217C50	–	2334	101,000	636

Interactive runtime graph

Below are interactive comparison graphs of some of these tactical lights. Hover your mouse to see more details. If you use a mobile device, hold your phone horizontally.

In the following graph, we zoomed in to show the differences better. It shows a better picture of these lights within the first 10 minutes after turn on.

Beamshots

Disclaimer: This flashlight was bought with my own money. I have not been paid to review, nor have I been holding back on problems or defects.

Overall conclusion

Pros:

1. Very high quality
2. Great accessories
3. Plenty bright and nice performance

Cons

1. I’d like a little more control over the modes… but that’s maybe because I’m not used to this kind of UI
2. Proprietary Olight battery and charger.

Rating: 4 stars ★★★★

There is a lot to like about this light. It screams quality from the moment you hold the package in your hand. It’s been designed into the smallest details. Everything is designed with a purpose. The buzzing Low Battery warning is a very interesting feature. You can’t miss a low-voltage warning anymore. The LED centered well and the XHP35 is yet very powerful. The only downside of the Olight Warrior X PRO is its use of a dedicated battery and charger. Although this might be an important feature for Olight, it’s not for me as a flashaholic with many batteries and chargers. Therefore, it’s not worth 5 stars IMHO.