I used to get excited about Olight’s new releases back in the day because it was always a nice “cool” looking “standard” sized flashlight. I didn’t always agree with the proprietary battery and LED but the flashlights always looked really cool in my opinion. Here recently, all they release is these small flashlights and gimmicky pens and lights. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?
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I’m all Oilighted out with the endless stream of emails every day.
I’d unsub, but in case they have one of those 5buk specials or something, I’d rather not miss out. Or was that Thrunite?
Keychain lights. One has the AAA twisty like the i03 or something, the other has the captive-head rechargeable like the iR2D2. Both nice…
In all fairness, other than using better emitters, there’s not a bunch more they could do, don’t you think? They offer a light for just about anything you’d need. For awhile, I was getting tired of them releasing the same damn light only in a different color. That seems to have slowed down.
Like most other products, they have their place with many people.
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Agreed Olight no longer interests me like it used to. Then again the led flashlight thing has been beat to death. Time to revive some old body styles with lep emitters in them.
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sometimes i see an Olight table at a gun show.
they usually deeply discount discontinued product.
if i am willing to wait until the next generation,
the previous one is still good enough for me.
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The Arkfeld series is wildly popular, as is the new Baton Turbo. I think what you’re experiencing might just be a mature product line. They have a lot of well-established core models that now get updates every few years, e.g. the Baton 4 is a very polished version of the previous Baton 3, S1R II, etc. Some current models are getting close to the end of their release cycle, so I would expect lights like the Baton 3 Pro, Warrior 3S, and so on to be updated sooner rather than later, maybe with interesting new features.
That said, they do sell a lot of gimmicky crap too, though a lot less since the “Obuy” store shut down.
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I just want them to launch a Warrior Nano Turbo, that’s all 
I think they could not use proprietary batteries. That’s a massive dealbreaker for me (and a good number of other people too.)
Even if their lights do have terrible emitters, they can always be swapped for better emitters by a knowledgeable modder. The proprietary batteries? Not so much.
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My coworker is a big Olight fan boy. I used to enjoy talking to him about flashlights but all he has knowledge of and wants to talk about is Olight. I try to talk about other brands but he seems uninterested. And now that Olight doesn’t come out with flashlights that excite me anymore, I try not to talk to him about the subject of flashlights anymore.
I feel like out of the big 3 (Olight, Fenix, Nitecore) Olight has fallen way behind. I don’t see them catching up anytime soon. It’s weird because I used to see them ahead of the pack.
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I agree with you on the proprietary batteries. I’d be interested to see how soon after that guy was killed by exploding sketchy batteries in an Olight that started because they got a lot of bad press for that and it wasn’t Olight’s fault. Putting the most optimistic spin on it that I can it could be that they see it as a safety feature.
As it stands I own two Olights, one S1R Turbo S that they no longer sell the battery for and a Warrior Mini 3 that I picked up recently in a sale. I like the WM3 a lot, build quality is really good, it’s very compact for a throwy 18650 and the dual-switch UI is great. Down-sides are the proprietary battery and the emitter is an SFT-40 but it’s cold white. In terms of cost the battery is in the same range as any other protected 18650 and I’m hoping that 18650 isn’t going to go away any time soon, but I would prefer to be able to use any battery. It is at least easily replaceable. They did also send me a nice AAA keychain light as a gift.
Having looked at the rest of the range but they don’t really appeal, the WM3 has a unique feature-set for its size and that’s why I like it. I would have preferred a 5000K SFT-40, but the cold white is probably more efficient and Olight’s main market is not the enthusiast.
Olight peaked in 2022/23. This year releases have been rather lacklustre, and sales infrequent. Clearly something changed at the company.
I’d be happy with a Warrior Mini with no proximity sensor like the original.
Eh, I see your point a bit, but while not ideal, was never a deal breaker for me. I take more issue with the proprietary charging. If you want to use a proprietary battery, go for it, but at least put a USB-C rechargeable port on the cell itself.
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If it helps any, the proximity sensor on the WM3 only works if it detects that it’s near something in the first second that it’s switched on. As yet it’s just stayed out of the way for me.
In my humble opinion, it’s not just Olight, but it’s a problem happening with all brands.
I will not address all the motifs I have to say this, but here is a brief:
-Nitecore is still using built in batteries and overpricing it’s products. I can remember how excited I was with the “P” series with that amazing switch, and then they started to produce those weird hybrid tactical-edc lights.
-Sofirn/Wurkkos: still using cheap FET drivers and underpowered tactical lights. The TD series are a huge waste of money for those who need a true duty light.
-Olight: still extremely overpriced for what the light really is. Flashlights were not supposed to be a luxury item.
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For my use case of light painting photography, that still isn’t useful as when the light is connected to a light painting tool it dims half a second after being turned on.
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I’d love to buy more Olights, as I like their design and build quality.
But I don’t do Li-Ion and I’ve stopped buying cold emitters ever since I discovered neutral ones, so that brand is essentially dead to me.
Literally all of the good flashlights are Li-ion based (and phones…and tablets…and laptops.) This is a strange stance to take.
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For Li-Ion cell powered flashlights, I only do single cell flashlights.
They’re pretty safe to use if you know what you are doing.
Some people don’t want to use Li-Ion cells because they don’t know how to use them safely, but, yeah, the best flashlights are Li-Ion based.
EDIT:
From what I hear, multi-Li-Ion-cell flashlights are also reasonably safe, but you need to balance charge the cells, which is something that doesn’t appeal to me. 
No, that’s not true. There are very good AA and AAA flashlights too.
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The performance of alkaline lights is ~20% of the performance of li-ion lights. It’s not even remotely comparable. Sorry.
Also, alkalines leak and damage the lights they’re in. Flashlight people refer to them as “alkaleaks” for a reason.
Also, alkalines are single-use cells and generate far more waste than li-ion lights that each get hundreds of cycles.
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