Olight has a new Mini lantern out called the Obulb and comes in 3 colors. It’s magnetic, floats in water, and has warm white modes along with red modes. Thanks to Skyben for sending this to me to check out and do a short review.
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Pickup the Olight Obulb at Amazon from Skyben
Red: Amazon.com (Affiliate Link)
Green: Amazon.com (Affiliate Link)
Grey: Amazon.com (Affiliate Link)
Packaging and Accessories
Packaging here is standard Olight white box high quality. On the front and top are photos of the light on their respective side, on the back is your information panel with runtimes and outputs. Accessories include the Obulb itself, a USB MCC 1A charging cable, and a Olight self adhesive magnetic backer that acts like a coin too.
Constructions
The obulb is available in 3 colors, a green, similar to the Olantern, a gray, and red that you see here. Red to me makes it look a lot like a pokeball I think. The dome is made from translucent polycarbonate and is reasonably thick. The bottom half is a rubberized plastic that provides some grip and it has the signature blue metallic strip in the middle.
On the bottom there are 3 brass contacts for charging, and the internal magnet is strong enough to easily hold it’s weight up and be reasonably vibration resistant.
Thanks to Oweban for sacrificing his Obulb so we can see inside, he provided me with these pictures to share what the circuit board, and battery configuration looks like. It’s a stacked design with the LED and Driver board being on top, a total of 8 LED, 4 for each color, Under that sits a 630mAh lithium polymer battery pouch, an aluminum tray, and then the board with the recharging pads and 2 buttons. It is IPX7 water rated meaning it can be submerged upto a meter for 30 minutes but it floats too. It’s drop rated for a meter too.
Size & Weight
This is pretty small, somewhere between a golf ball and baseball size. It measures 54.2mm in diameter and 48.4mm tall. Weight is 56.4g and it is IPX7 water rated and floats in water.
LED & Beam Shots
The Obulb has 2 LED colors, a warm white and a red. The warm white is a pretty warm, I would guess it’s about 2500k, the LED being used here is unknown, from looking at the circuit board it’s not square like most flashlight LED, it produces a good tone. Low is good for 3.5 lumens and high is 55 lumens. Low is enough light ot read a map, navigate a bathroom or low light tasks like that. High is enough light to prepare or eat a meal, navigate a small room with etc. It’s a nice even light. Red mode is rated at 7 lumens and fairly bright for a colored mode.
Runtime
I did measure runtimes in the White and Red modes for this light. In High mode for the whtie emitter the light held it’s rated output very consistently through out the range, total runtime was 3:40:00, this is 40 minutes longer then what Olight rates it for. Low mode is rated for 56 hours of runtime and I didn’t test this due to the length of the test. Red mode is a similar story but a little more sag in the output, holding at about 90% relative output for the duration of 8:40:00, this is an hour and 40 minutes better then what Olight rates it for officially. Heat isn’t a concern here at all, with the light remaining room temp to the test during use.
UI
The light has 4 simple modes that are linear with no short cuts and does have memory. The button is on the underside of the light but that doens’t matter since you can press the top as well when it’s on a hard surface. It takes a reasonably hard press to make it come on though. Once on long press to change modes. The mode progression is Low White, High White, Red, Red Flashing.
Recharging
Charing the internal 630mAh lithium polymer pouch battery is done on the bottom of the light with Olights MCC 1A charging system. Charging took 90 minutes with maximum charge rate of 0.6A so pretty much exactly 1C.
Pro’s
- Warm White from Olight
- It Floats and is waterproof
- Strong magnet allows it to be mounted on any magnetic surface.
- Better then expected battery life
Con’s
- Not something you will EDC probably or use daily
- Battery is sealed an non user replaceable.
Conclusion
I like the Olight Obulb. It’s not something I will use everyday but it can come in handy in a lot of different places. This is a nice simple light to give to young kids that is easy to operate but doesn’t have small pieces like many cylinder lights do. If you had a pool I could see tossing a few of these in to give ambient lighting at night, or using it in a shower to give you more light if needed. I may end up putting it in my car for winter to use that red blinking mode as a locator beacon should I happen to go off the road in a blizzard but I could also see it being nice on a bedside table, in a tent while camping etc.
I can’t help to think what the Olight Olantern would have been like with these white LED’s to create a nice warm tint. It’s a nice choice in LED and a surprise from Olights standard cool white. The price is also reasonable and the choice of colors is a nice touch. I am a fan of the Obulb even though I won’t use it all the time.
I don’t care for it’s dedicated charger but I’m sure they did that to retain it’s water resistance. Of course I also don’t care care for the rubber flaps that cover the charging ports on so many lights nowadays as they’re so prone to breakage.
