[Review] Olight X9R Marauder

[rookiedaddy]

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.

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

Thanks rd, but I’m a hack and CRX is an artist. 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!

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…)

[hehaw77]

@JasonWW

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.

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

[mortuus]

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.

[hehaw77]

@mortuus

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.

Agreed… Initially I was trying to find fault with the light ; especially due to the sensor issue I first experienced (that’s figured out now) but the more I used it the more I became impressed with it… after turbo ran out it did end up 2 lights down from turbo which is still ok for regular use…