Well, here I thought I was special! :person_facepalming: Lydia from Olight contacted me (as apparently others on this forum) to review the Olight S1A Baton. Although I’m not the first to get my review up, I’m hoping it helps shed some more light on this Olight product. Sooooo…… Here we go!
Olight S1A Baton is a compact single AA size flashlight which accepts Alkaline, NiMH, and 1.5V Primary Lithium cells as well as Li-Ion 14500 rechargeable cells. The S1A that I received came in a small clear plastic product package. Inside the package was the Olight S1A Baton, a nice Olight branded lanyard, and a concise usage manual written in several languages. This manual covers basic features and specifications of the light, battery installation, and operation procedures.
The Olight S1A Baton comes pre-loaded with a 1.5V Lithium Primary cell, which the packaging refers to as simply Lithium Iron Battery. :question: There is a piece of plastic between the bottom of the cell and the tail spring, keeping it from making electrical contact during storage/shipping. After removing the protective plastic piece and putting the tail-cap back on, the light is ready for use. I thought it was interesting that Olight also included a small metal pin on the end of the lanyard which makes it easier to thread the lanyard through the lanyard hole on the tail-cap. Cool trick. I’ve not seen that with flashlights.
The S1A is designed with the typical Olight shape/appearance, which I happen to like. 
It has the typical magnet-in-the-tail-cap. It has the typical compact build and the typical square knurling on the battery tube and tail-cap. One ‘new’ appearance detail is the blue PVD coating on the bezel and side-button trim. These are nice aesthetic touches – if you like blue (which I do). The S1A also includes the typical Olight clip-on belt/pocket clip. I like the looks and the functionality of this clip – to a point. When I was carrying my S20-L2 every day, the clip, which had the same design as this one on the S1A, began to loosen up and eventually would lose its grip on the light if bumped. I can’t tell how many times I had to go back and look for my flashlight because it had fallen off in the car when I sat down and it bumped the seat-belt clip. The part of the clip that goes over a belt/pocket/cap-bill/etc. is a nice design, but the part that clips around the battery tube needs to be re-visited by engineering. The clip does work well enough if the light is inside a pocket, where the clip’s only task is to hold the light in a steady position.
Let’s talk briefly about the modes. There are five lighting levels plus Strobe for a total of six modes: Moonlight (0.5lm) Low (5lm) Medium (50lm) High (220lm start, stepping down to 100lm) Turbo (600lm start, stepping down to 300lm) Strobe (Turbo/High level strobe). The output/run-time spec shows how the time is divided between the dual levels for the modes that have step-downs. It has been mentioned before that this is a nice bit of honesty that isn’t really required by the ANSI run-time test. So, thanks Olight for this bit of transparency.
The Olight S1A Baton utilizes the familiar Olight UI with electronic side switch. A press-hold is required to change modes, and will continue in ascending order at two second edit: half-second :person_facepalming: intervals, starting over once it reaches the highest mode. Turbo mode is only available if you use a Li-Ion 14500. Otherwise, the light will only ascend to High mode before it starts the cycle again at low. Moon is not part of the cycle. It can only be reached by a press-hold from off. Strobe is reached by a triple-press from either on or off. The light has mode memory and a short press from off will turn the light on in whichever mode it was in when turned off, including Moon mode, but not Strobe. If the light was operating in Strobe mode when turned off, it will return to the mode used prior to Strobe when turned back on. Clear as mud? Read the manual. It explains a bit more than I care to.
There are a couple of changes to the UI from what I’ve known with my older S20-L2. First, although my S20-L2 had an electronic lockout feature, I could find no such feature in the UI of the S1A. So, the only form of lockout available for the S1A is to loosen the tail-cap a bit to break connection (the threads are anodized). I would have liked to have that electronic lockout, but honestly, I rarely used it with my S20-L2, so I won’t really miss it too much. My older S20-L2 also had a plastic button which was translucent and had an indicator LED under it. The button on the S1A is soft, opaque black rubber. There is no indicator LED. The soft rubber button takes a slightly more decisive press than the plastic button on my S20-L2, making it a little harder to accidentally activate the S1A by bumping the button. That’s good enough for me.
Second, the UI has a new feature – shut down timers! With the light on, a double-tap will set the timer. There are two timers to choose from – 3 minutes and 9 minutes. After the double-tap, the S1A will blink out one blink for a 3 minute timer or two blinks to indicate a 9 minute timer. To change the duration, double-tap again after the blink(s) occur. The light will then blink (once or twice) to indicate the new setting. After the time limit is reached, the light will shut down. The timer isn’t persistent. It must be activated again for each intended use.
As mentioned, the light comes pre-loaded with an Olight branded 1.5V Lithium Primary. The light works well enough with that cell, except that it is restricted from utilizing Turbo mode. It will only go to High. In order to get Turbo mode, you must use a 14500 Li-Ion rechargeable cell. Unfortunately, the S1A will not work with flat top cells, only button top. I only have Efest Purple flat top cells in the 14500 size, so I was unable to test the S1A’s functionality with a Li-Ion cell. In trying to get a Lithium rechargeable cell to work for testing, I loaded a Lithium-Iron-Phoshate or LiFePO4 cell. That’s when I discovered that there is apparently a gap in the driver’s voltage range. I’m assuming the driver has low voltage protection for Li-Ion cells. With a LiFePO4 cell installed, if I double-tap, or press-hold to get to Turbo, it will in fact reach Turbo, but will step down to Medium almost immediately. If I put the LiFePO4 cell in my Nitecore I4 charger, it will overcharge enough to get Turbo for several seconds, but it still steps down shortly. After the step-down, a press-hold will still cycle back up to the higher modes. In fairness, the documentation and packaging don’t claim any LiFePO4 support. I was just trying to get Turbo to work, so I could test it.
After trying to get Turbo working with the LiFePO4 cell, I decided to attempt adding a button to the Efest Purple 14500. The S1A has a black plastic washer over the bottom of the driver, with a small hole through which the button top of the cell makes contact with a metal bump, instead of a driver-side spring. I was going to use a magnet as a temporary button top, but didn’t have a magnet small enough to get past the washer to make contact with the bump on the driver, so I had to solder. It took me a few minutes to solder a tiny piece of copper onto the top of the cell. I didn’t get it perfectly centered, but it works in the light, so I now get to use Turbo mode! Yay! The only reason I can think of for this design to make sense is that it would function as a ‘mechanical’ reverse-polarity protection for the driver. So, that makes it a feature, not a bug!
Beam profile is a subject I don’t know much about. I can see what looks good to me, but I can’t express very well in words what I might change or improve. I’m really just not picky enough with beam shape, hot-spot size, etc. But, I will try to describe what I see the best that I can. The Olight S1A Baton utilizes a TIR lens instead of a typical reflector. The hot-spot isn’t very tight. I’ve said recently that I like a balanced beam size/shape in-between the classic roles of throw and flood. The S1A gives me that. The hot-spot is a bit wide, but it’s even in brightness and tint. Speaking of tint, I must confess this is another area where I’m just not discerning enough. As far as I’m concerned, this S1A puts out a plain white light. It doesn’t look blue, green, yellow, or rosy. If I had to guess, I’d say color temperature is on the cooler side of Neutral white, like a 3 bin. Although this is a Cree XM-L2 emitter, I don’t detect any Cree Rainbow effect either. Perhaps that’s because of the TIR? Back to beam shape, though. The corona around the hot-spot is obviously not perfectly round. It has a squarish shape to it. It’s not very noticeable unless you begin to turn it a bit while shining at near surfaces. By near, I mean just a few feet. Even shining from my desktop to the ceiling, it isn’t really noticeable to me, and I’m looking for it. But, that’s mostly because the corona isn’t very bright at all by that distance. Most of the light is in the somewhat wide hot-spot. At a couple feet from a white wall or ceiling, the hot-spot seems to fade fairly evenly into the corona, which just isn’t perfectly round.
Now, for those who have used Olight products before, it is obvious that it’s going to tail-stand perfectly. The tail-cap has no button, so it’s just flat on the end. Additionally, the light feels almost weighted, although it isn’t really, unless you count the tail-magnet as a weight. It is very stable, and even with a little-more-than-a-little bump, it won’t fall over, but will wobble back into a straight standing position. Since the top mode is only 600lm, we know that the XM-L2 is very under-powered. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that it doesn’t overheat in tail-standing while on. In fact, the head will begin to get warm a few seconds after being turned on in Turbo mode, and the whole body will be very warm if left tail-standing in Turbo for a few minutes. But, it never gets too hot, and it has a timed step-down from 600lm to 300lm at 60 seconds anyway, according to the specs, so the heat production should drop at that point and never reach a critical temperature. I wouldn’t be afraid to leave it unattended in a room, tail-standing, during a power outage or whatever.
In conclusion, the Olight S1A Baton is not much different in form or function from other Olight Baton products of the past. They’ve added some new shut-down timers in the UI and a reverse-polarity protection design for the driver, and updated the look just a little, but they removed the electronic lock-out. The light looks and feels high quality to me. I like the Olight UI. I like the aesthetic design of the Baton series. I like that the S1A can reach a regulated 600lm output in Turbo and that it also includes a sub-lumen Moon mode. I like that it can utilize several different cell chemistries and voltages. I wish there was a way for them to cover the LiFePO4 gap, but I fear that would require elimination of LVP for Li-Ion cells. All-in-all, I think I’m going to like the S1A. It’s definitely going to be my new EDC, a position that has been vacant since I broke my S20-L2 trying to see what was inside. (It’s fixable, I just haven’t done it yet)
Have I missed anything? Tell me in the comments. Thanks for reading! I know it was long, but hopefully worth it! Oh, by the way, sorry for lack of beam shots. My phone’s camera is all I have for taking pictures, and unfortunately is no good at all for very low light conditions like beam shots. I did try, but they didn’t turn out to be useful for anything that beam shots are supposed to be useful for. :weary:
