Olight H2R review (Headlamp/right angle, 18650, XHP50)

Old design magnetic tailcap, like S10RII was better.
You can use any 16340 and the light was able to charge it, and no live contact…
But I think the design was pricier for them because the charging circuit had to be integrated to the light.

Update: according to Olight’s engineers there’s over current protection on the battery at 27 amps. So shorting the tailcap contacts will not damage the battery or the light.

If they went through the trouble to put a [short] current limiting circuit, why would you set it at 27A? A lot of cells will still get dangerously hot and can still vent if ran continuously at that current. Seems silly.

And one more THANK YOU to maukka for your AWESOME reviews!! It's unfortunate that it took this long for light tests/reviews to start actually characterizing the LIGHT (beyond lumens/lux) and not just the physical torch/flashlight. Maybe this will get more momentum into the high CRI market. These days you don't need a CW top bin emitter to get practical flux numbers. 90CRI Nichias in a 3.5mm footprint are capable of 900 lumens with only moderate over-driving (~3.5A). I know that we all love our 2000 lumen headlamps, but lets be honest; how much do you actually get to use that? Until Lumens/W take a HUGE jump, there's a harsh limitation to heat dissipation in our compact lights. And in my experience, about 1200 lumens is a max for a practical and usable 'High' in an EDC/headlamp. Anything higher only makes sense as a momentary function. Just my $0.02.

THANKS!


i really like your detailed reviews!

Since the protection is in the bundled battery, which is a high current one, and only Olight proprietary cells can be shorted via the tailcap contacts, I see no problem. Other 18650 Olights compatible with the H2R charging system I have tested have had their OCP at much lower levels: if I remember correctly 5 A for the 3200 mAh (came with S2R) and 11 A for the 3500 mAh (S30R III).

Now, who has a clamp meter, an H2R and balls of steel? I want to know if a dead short using a thick wire actually trips protection on that battery. It doesn’t have low-voltage protection (WTF?), so I’m not sure I believe them about this.

Question is, how can this be IPX8? if submerged and also maybe in heavy rain will this short?

Olight H2R torture test

THank you, because despite the price i like the light to be honest (WW tint), ......but now it seems i'm not able to understand something in the whole story. :confused

I received mines today in neutral white. Mine is definitely neutral white. If I had to guess, maybe around 4600 to 4700k. It’s just slightly warmer than my EC4SW’s (MT-G2) and much cooler than my Manker E14 II with 4000K Nichia 219C. I was actually looking forward to the warmer temp that I saw in this review and another review, but in the end I’m very happy with the temp and tint.

My new favourite reviewer! The lumen/hour comparison is very useful, give us to the technology used by each manufacturers. Would love to see medium and high runtimes and lumen/hour as well if you have the time (for future review).

Big thanks Mauri,

  • Clemence

PWM - mark of cheap lights.

That countdown could be very fast. One use of that magnet is stick the light to a metal surface.
Or imagine keeping it in you pocket with a few coins.

Sure is. Personally I really like the lm/W graph!

The battery of my H2R died suddenly, no reading at all. I removed the wrap to discover it was a 30Q inside (I thought it was VTC6), and the reason it died was because the cell’s internal protection triggered after being shorted.

A real shame that huge design flaw pulls down this light from high quality to medicore. Perhaps still good for walking the dog, but not as worklight.

A really good review, maukka - thank you :+1:

I must have missed it the first time round, but got here in the end, after ZoomieFan provided the link :slight_smile:

I normally lean towards throw rather than flood, but I was still rather interested in the H2R until I saw that “neutral white” was actually warm white. Would have made a nice area work light. Oh, well.

That problem has been corrected, they’ve re-designed the tail cap so that can’t happen anymore:

It was asked about recently (this month) in the Q/A section in their site: Olight | Illuminate Your World.
.

“With the new tail cap is there still a danger of shorting out with metal objects?”

OLIGHT answer:
“The new tailcap does not have a danger of shorting out with metal objests”

I’ve read other reviews where the H2R NW has actually been closer to 5000K. So it may be a gamble or the first production run used a warmer emitter.

I think it’s that first production used the warmer emitter and they’re all 5000K now. I want to say CalvinIS confirmed that, but I’m not 100% certain off the top of my head. My review sample from Illumn was 5000K, and I haven’t heard of anybody getting a warm one in the past 6 months.

The old tailcap used a PTC thermistor to reduce the severity of shorts. It wasn’t bad enough to make the battery explode, but it could easily ignite things. The new use uses a diode to prevent them, which was what they should have done from the beginning.