Imalent MS32 - Detailed Review

LuxWad · 2024-03-09T12:34:29.282Z

Imalent sent their MS32 for review, and Matt loaned me his SR32 and MS18 for comparison. While it may hold the record for brightest flashlight on the market, the question I had going into this was “Is the MS32 actually a good flashlight?”

Here is the video review on the Lumencraft channel.

In short: The MS32 is insanely powerful on Turbo, but more importantly it’s actually able to sustain significantly more output than any other light on the market - about 37,000 lumens for ~40 minutes!

The build quality is solid, much better than the MS18 and slightly updated from the SR32, while being notably larger and heavier than that older model. I haven’t had any issues with emitters burning or overheating, but reliability and longevity are still concerns with its IP56 rating, nonserviceable fans, and proprietary battery pack.

User interface is solid, and beam quality is quite nice for an XHP70.2 light. The carrying strap itself is nice but the connection point is not sufficient for the weight of this light.

Graphs galore!

MS32 - First 10 Minutes:

MS32_10Min4008×2805 223 KB

Turbo is sustained for 1 minutes (with the expected sag), and drops down to 37K lumens at that point. High 3 starts at 90K and drops to 23K, while High 2 holds 40,000 lumens.

MS32 - First 90 Minutes

MS32_90Min4008×2805 283 KB

All of the high modes drop out within 90 minutes. Turbo sustains 37K for 36 minutes, while High 2 holds over 38K before dying at 42 minutes. Note the sudden increase in output on the highest modes, the pattern we expect with a linear driver. Regulation is quite good on all these highest modes.

MS32 - Total Runtimes

MS32_TotalRuntime4008×2805 182 KB

Mid 2 holds about 9K lumens for an impressive 200 minutes, while Mid holds 4K for 330 minutes. The Low and Moon modes both ran far longer than I was willing to test (I actually ran the 80-lumen “moon” mode for about 5 days before shutting it off)

MS32 - Total Runtimes (Zoomed)

MS32_TotalRuntime_50K4008×2805 263 KB

Regulation is not great on the lower modes, with output slowly dropping throughout the run. Mid 2 wanders a bit, but the timescale here is so long that it’s not noticeable in use.

For the sake of comparison, here are all the same graphs for both the SR32 and the MS18:

SR32_10Min4008×2812 193 KB

SR32_90Min4008×2811 261 KB

SR32_TotalRuntime4008×2812 186 KB

SR32_TotalRuntime_50K4008×2812 246 KB

You can see the SR32 performs about the same, but with half(!) the output. Regulation is perhaps a bit better on the higher modes, and a bit worse on the lower modes… again negligible.

MS18_10Min4010×2809 250 KB

MS18_90Min4010×2809 307 KB

MS18_TotalRuntime4010×2809 190 KB

MS18_TotalRuntime_50K4010×2809 256 KB

The MS18 displays much worse performance all-around - besides the lower output, regulation is apparently nonexistant and runtimes are pretty poor considering. Turbo however is held for a bit longer than the MS32, about 1.5 minutes, same as the SR32. High 2 sustains >24K lumens for about 8 minutes, which is pretty decent.

And now, direct comparisons of the five brightest lights on the market: MS32, SR32, MS18, X75, MS12 Mini:

AllBrightest_3Min4012×2810 387 KB

In the first 3 minutes, it’s clear the MS32 and SR32 pull ahead of the pack, sustaining more light for longer than the competitors. The MS32 in particular holds a massive lead here!

AllBrightest_10Min_40K4012×2810 402 KB

The first 10 minutes shows the MS32 again dominating, sustaining over 12,000 lumens more than the next brightest option, the SR32 on Mid 3, for this entire duration.

The MS18 falls well below the others after 5 minutes, but for the MS12 Mini which sits at the bottom of the pack - not bad though considering how tiny it is next to these other behemoths!

AllBrightest_TotalRuntime4012×2810 373 KB

AllBrightest_TotalRuntime_50K4012×2810 422 KB

Total runtimes prove the battery systems in the SR32 and MS32 to perform very well, sustaining significantly more light and lasting substantially longer than the competition. A very impressive showing here from Imalent.
(Note that the X75 runtimes here are with the short battery - the BP8 will double the runtimes. It still won’t run as long as the SR32 however!)

CONCLUSION

This light is truly incredible a night, the output is simply absurd. The asking price is high, but I think Imalent has justified that this time around - and with the SR32 I might add, which I have been greatly enjoying these past few months.

I talked in the video about my love for the X75, and that still holds true primarily for the form factor, which really is that much more carryable in practice. It also features an IPX8 rating, a replaceable fan, and a much superior cooling system that actually responds to the heat in the light and runs independant of the user input - it’s very trustworhy, where the Imalents are notorious for having build quality and reliability issues.

That said, the MS32 and SR32 are much better built than previous Imalents, and they’ve one-upped Acebeam by having cleaner beams with less tint-shift (none apparent in the SR32).

Overall, I am happy to recommend the MS32… if you can cough up the $750 they’re asking.

Well thanks for reading/watching, I hope something here was informative and/or helpful to you.

LuxWad · 2024-03-09T12:50:19.159Z

Also, I mistakenly said the SR32 uses XHP35.HI when it actually has XHP50.3 HI emitters. Sorry about that.

CampinGaz · 2024-03-09T14:42:06.018Z

Thanks for your review… I hope to see a monster like this in action sooner or later!

LightThrower · 2024-03-09T15:03:34.951Z

Wow, amazing review! Love your channel. I just wanted to say that the XHP50.3’s are know to brun out when driven that hard, but the XHP70.2’s are far from the max they can do. Therefor the MS32 shouldn’t have the same issue of LED’s bruning out as the SR32.