[Review] Olight X9R Marauder

Balloon

Yeah I tend to drool over big lights while in fact I really use the smallest ones most of the time…
Next one will surely be the I3T, but my expectations are not really high after the controversial M1T.

Do u have any ways to measure how hot it gets on highest ? but nice review :slight_smile: Its a sexy looking light even their biggest they manage to make it nice looking compared to the acebeam x70 or imalent dx80 which arent really nice looking - not that a light must be nice looking but its a +. The look with the blue leds make it really look futuristic and beauty to watch.

Bummer X3 u didnt get a chance :frowning: maybe ask again ? 1 unit for entire France is a little crazy …

I already asked twice, but I can understand why they won’t give more than one for review.
I don’t know anyone who would spend more than 30€ for a flashlight, so 600€ is not going to happen everyday !
They once told me that because it’s been a long time working together they would send me one. But I think they will have some difficulties to sell enough to justify 3 years of R&D :frowning:

Rookiedaddy, I understand if you don’t have a way to measure the lumens, but do you have a lux meter of any type?
I would really like to know when and how much it starts to ramp down on the L8 power level. I think a simple ceiling bounce test would probably tell us.

Interesting.
Pricey too.
Nicely done review, I like it! :sunglasses:

only thing I can say without doubt is that it won’t perform as stated at the given battery Voltage, wonder why they do that? Fully charged and ready to boast the claimed performance levels the battery pack will be 16.8V.

Or would it have to be 33.6V? Need coffee…

8 cells, 3000mAh per cell as stated, 6V emitters, so 4S2P pack construction. The only way to have 6000MAh pack given what they state would require 33.6V at full charge… 11.4V at cut off (if targeting 2.8V as the low point) So where in the world does 14.4V come into play? The “nominal” 3.6V per cell? Don’t they know the cell is virtually dead at 3.6V

Not all that unusual, I’m confused…

Yes, the only way it could perform the fullest is if it would go with an 8S battery pack.

I do doubt it though, but if that is the case, then that is excellent, as brightness will stay constant over all levels as long it is kept cool.

Interesting, im not sure i understand all this correctly, what is that they should have done with the battery back according to u if we just imagine u worked for olight and had freehands there ?

All the battery specs look good to me.
I’m thinking it’s basically the same battery design as the Imalent DX80 32,000 lumen light which uses 8 x 70.2 instead of this lights 6 x 70.2.

4S2P (8 x 30Q) 14.4 nominal voltage, 16.8 fully charged. It probably uses a 19v 2A laptop style charger to give each bank of 4 cells 4A. That’s equivalent to 1A each cell. There’s your 4 hour charge time. (BTW, Imalent states a 3h 10m charge time for some reason. Eh, close enough.)

I found this.

??
3000mAh per cell, 4s 2p is 14.4v 6000mAh assuming nominal 3.6 per cell, which is normal.
Lithium ion is usually 3.7 or 3.6
It is not “virtually dead” that is more or less 50% capacity.
Cells are basically dead at 2.8v.

Nobody rates battery packs using the peak 4.2v per cell, always use 3.6 or 3.7.


the highest temperature I recorded is ~57 upon steps down, that's measured indoor with room temperature at 29. outdoor I do get ~3 minutes of runtime before it steps down.
but note what I measure is what X9R radiated to the surface of the light and the internal temperature should be much higher as I do not have any equipment to measure the internal temperature so do take my temperature reading with a few pinch of salt (it's the main reason why I do not want to include the reading in my review as it won't paint the whole runtime picture).


Indoor without any active cooling, it steps down to L6 (6,400 lumens) after 1+ minutes, outdoor, I do get ~3 minutes of runtime before it steps down to L6.
Do see the following for details:

which is also shared by you above.


Battery reads 16.7V after fully charge, your meter may reads 16.8V due to different meter accuracy.
You are right on the 4S2P, my calculation:
4S x 3.6V = 14.4V; 2P x 3000mAh = 6000mAh; 14.4V x 6000mAh = 86.4Wh
8 x 3.6V x 3000mAh = 86.4Wh

A picture of the adapter:

But I may have misunderstood your confusion...

I was probably most accurate when I stated that I needed coffee… :wink:

Anyone remember Cottonpicker’s chargers? He put a graph on his Octocharger that indicates what percentage of useful life the cell has at different voltages on the side of each charger. HE states…

4.2V 100%
4.1V 87%
4.0V 75%
3.9V 55%
3.8V 30%
3.5V Empty

Not to entirely take his word for it, I just drained the pair of 30T (corrected from the first stated 40T) 21700 cells in my DBC-05 light (a near 50A draw makes this fairly easy) and then inserted the cells in my MiBoxer C4-12… at 3.75V the charger shows 50% and at 3.63V it says 27%

Just so you know, this light makes 21,200 lumens out the front on 3 XHP-70.2… one of which I burned one of the quarter sections of one emitter in doing this test. Even with more than 2 pounds of copper under the emitters.

So in my own experience the median number of 3.6V for an Li-ion cell is virtually useless. To say it’s an 14.4V pack is misleading, even if it is Industry standard specification. Useless for us in the real world, as is, in the end, a light that makes this much power output from a hand held source. I ran my light at most 60 seconds, and it proved too much in the heat being produced. Pay $600 for a light that you can use for a minute or two at a time? (lower output stepdown notwithstanding) Somebody might, I sure won’t!

LOL! I see your point now... in a way, I think I do agree with you, but that has been how battery/pack been rated, so, we can't fault the manufacturer for following "standard".

As for your other point, I get it too. However, as the saying goes: "Value is in the eye of the beholder".

Cheers mate...

57°C is pretty normal. User Hehaw77 said “The Olight is exceptionally good at dispersing the heat. I felt absolutely nothing in turbo. While the DX80 got hot quickly”.

This was quite confusing to me. How could he not feel anything in turbo. That doesn’t make sense. So if you measured 57°C it does indeed mean turbo is heating it up.

I’m also glad to see it do the rated 3 minutes (outside where air is flowing) before stepping down. Obviously Olight is being a bit more conservative in their thermal stepdown temperature threshold compared to Imalent who lets their DX80 run to a higher temp.

Now we just need to see the X9R get tested on output to confirm its lumens rating is not exaggerated. :smiley:

rd, I gotta say I’d surely be very interested even at the price point had I not already built something of similar high output myself. Doing this wasn’t exactly a budget experiment in it’s own right, so if I weren’t capable of building these lights I would probably be very excited to see companies producing top tier performance. :wink:

Dale, I could only admire from far to your awesome custom build lights, it's the same to CRX's equally attractive custom build too. I have a lot of respect to skillful custom builder and modder like yourself and CRX!

Coming back to some "strange" behavior reported by a youtuber and Hehaw77 about the X9R sudden ramping down and up, I did some brief testing of the sensor, it seems that there are 2-part sensing in play here, one is proximity (the black dot at top-left in the following picture), while the other is some kind of photoelectric (the bottom middle diffused dot)...

and they "seems" to work in unison with the proximity sensor taking priority being the triggering mechanism of the ramping process. Note however, I'm honestly not sure if there are 2 separate sensor or if one is transmitter and the other is receiver, it just seems like 2 sensors to me.

  • due to the proximity and reflective area involved, the size of the obstructive object matters, the smaller the size of the obstructive object, the shorter the distance to see the ramping effects
  • if I cover both sensors, the light will immediately start ramping down,
  • if I slowly remove the obstruction (just a piece of white cardboard), at ~66cm, the light will return completely to "stable" high brightness (6,400 lumens and above), but if I'm testing againt a white wall (big obstructive object), the light will return completely to "stable" high brightness ~85cm
  • in between ~40cm to 65cm (for small cardboard) or ~60cm to 80cm (against the wall), the light will continue it's ramping up and ramping down, it's kinda fun (for a while at least) watching the light doing this as X9R can't seems to decide if it should ramp down or ramp up... LOL!
  • if I first cover both sensor, then uncover only the photoelectric sensor (I'm assuming that's the photoelectric sensor, but I can't be sure), the light will start ramping up and down too.
  • if I first cover both sensor, then uncover only the proximity sensor, the light will stay ramped down (level 3).

at this moment, I can't come to any conclusion about how the proximity work, but it works in its own way. Above is what I have tested so far.

Thanks rd, but I’m a hack and CRX is an artist. :wink: FWIW, I got the burned 70.2 replaced with a sliced and diced one I had, the light is back to making 20,000+ lumens. (I’ll have to be more careful how long I run it in Turbo) It may have been that the reflector was up against the dome and caused additional heating to that emitter that showed the burn, I sliced the dome off and checked and the actual Silicone wafer was cracked near the corner and outside of that crack the die burned, so yeah, it seriously got overheated.

Sounds like the sensors are doing their job and maintaining a safe output. They can be tricked with the brightness of white paper or a white wall but you definitely know they work anyway! :slight_smile:

I think Olight has done an epic job on this one, just wish the price weren’t so high. (they did a sale recently and got it down to around $400 if I’m not mistaken, but still…)

No biggie here Jason… my first test was regular use… but if you read my subsequent posts you will see I did an extensive turbo test… and guess what still just became luke warm… not hot…. extensive means I ran it in turbo till it cycled down waited for the temps to cool off and went back to turbo till the batteries could no longer take it… eg… still worked but could not go back to turbo… I’d say this went on for about 15-20 min… just luke warm… that’s it…. they’ve done a awesome job here… with heat

hehaw77 and it was more or less just as bright even tho u cycled down waited, and back up again then thats very impressive imo.