Received a notifications from Olight that a package is enroute to yours truly, and to my surprise, it took only 24 hours for the package to reach Malaysia from China...
Great job UPS!
Let's take a quick look at the Olight OPen 2 specifications:
There are a couple of things that Olight has done right with this new OPen 2. First and foremost, the packaging, it feels really premium right out of the box. The contents were arranged very neatly in a black plastic holder and on top of that, the whole thing were contained in another transparent cover.
Let's look at the four sides of how Olight arrange the OPen 2 package:
main logo side
opposite of the main logo is the OPen 2 placeholder
USB-C cable
an extra refill. There is already a preinstalled refill in the OPen 2. Secondly, the OPen 2 machining is top notch. From the spiral grip pattern to threading, they are of pretty high quality.
a trit slot... but since I do not have any tritium available on hand, I use GITD instead and the results:
Thirdly, The bolt action button for the pen is very smooth, it's one of the smoothest bolt action button I have ever use before. Well done Olight!
Last but not least... FINALLY! Olight is using Type-C charging port!
during charging, there is a RED indicator, it will switch-Off when charging is finish.
USB-C charging is drawing ~200ma, OPen 2 can be fully charged in less than an hour from an almost empty battery. Although this is not the first time Olight release a Pen with Light function product, but it's the first time Olight release a Pen with Light product that incorporate a Type-C port recharging. I hope we will see more Type-C port rechargeable portable lighting products from Olight in coming releases so that we do not need to fiddle with all the different MCC chargers and its charging woes.
After all the initial excitements settled down. A couple of not so great things started to surface as yours truly began using this OPen 2 in daily writing.
Firstly, as a writing intrument, this is not lightweight at 38g. As Olight didn't advertise nor feature any tactical intent for this OPen 2, perhaps for occasional signature and note taking this is fine. But for constant writing, this just not it for yours truly, especially not with the light section attached. If your job requires you to do a lot of writing, then the best way to use this pen without wearing down your finger muscle is to separate the light and the pen section while writing.
Anodizing. The anodizing of Olight aluminum based products is deteriorating and not as great as it used to, this OPen 2 has a tiny speck chipped right out of the box.
The refill. There seems to be an issue with the ink flow as I had in a couple of occasions needed to swing the pen to get the ink flowing again. Beside the Olight original refill, Olight has listed SCHMIDT CL8126 Mini Refill as compatible. OPen 2 uses non standard refill length of 76mm or 3in, and unlike the more common G2 refill, it's not easily available where I'm from and a search at Amazon doesn't turn up much listing of the 3in refill neither. However, the good news is, I was just informed by Olight that the Olight refill comes in a pack of 3 for approximately 8 USD. They are calling it "O-Refill", simple name, easy to remember. Note that the name of the refill and the price are yet to be release information, so take it with a pinch of salt as it could change anytime.
For when you couldn't order the refill, no worries, you can still get a common D1 refill and mod it to fit the OPen 2... below is my attempt:
Top is the original Olight refill (O-Refill) and the bottom is a hack/mod using a Zebra 4C (D1 size refill), heat shrink tube, used/empty plastic refill tube cut to pad the length. Do take good care of the spring as the spring length is precision engineered to OPen 2, it will also affect how smooth is the bolt switch action goes.
Next, OPen 2 is using PWM. Not a fan.
Olight has not been using PWM in their handheld flashlight in the past couple of years (exception to their headlamp like Array), I'm honestly quite surprise to find that Olight uses PWM in OPen 2, even the i1R 2 EOS is not using PWM. Oh yes, for yours truly at least, the PWM is noticeable during usage.
The UI of OPen 2 is a subset of the trial and tested Olight's side-switch UI:
No timer function, no lockout.
Following is the tested output:
The usual disclaimer: I do not claim the above measured lumens as authoritative nor an indication of over/under-stating the number given by manufacturer. It's calibrated against some known light output (e.g. SureFire, Elzetta, etc.) so take it with a grain of salt and just as a relative reading.
Runtime testing follows...
High Mode (120 lumens) Runtime test:
and following captured from OPen 2 User Manual:
Moon Mode (5 lumens) Runtime test:
about an hour shy of the 10 hours claim...
An extra:
For those who are curious, this group of tiny boxes is a barcode, no, not QR-Code, it's a type of 2D barcode call Data Matrix. In this instance, the 2D Data Matrix barcode encodes the serial number of the OPen 2 that were also etched at the bottom of the Data Matrix barcode.
In conclusion, would I spend my money on this OPen 2, well... if it come in full Titanium with some Tungsten Carbide accessories... then may be... just may be...
