The Arkflex adds a new angle to the innovative wedge style EDC. The Arkflex rounds out the harder squared edges of the Arkfeld design. It is a little smaller and lighter than the Arkfeld and lacks the rotary control, UV light, and laser. Arkflex adds a new feature: a hinged top which can tilt the dual LED emitter to 90º angle. With the tilting emitter, the Arkflex can transform from a standard wand style flashlight, into a clip-on hands free work light.
In testing, the Arflex meets or exceeds all of its printed specs. The Arkflex outputs a little over a maximum of 1000 lumens in Turbo mode. It has a runtime of 120 minutes in Turbo and can be fully immersed in water.
But nothing is perfect. After my testing, my sample unit wouldn’t turn off until the battery died and wouldn’t recharge. It was defective. But rather than this review ending in a negative conclusion, it became a test of the company’s warranty and customer service.
I went to the Warranty and Repairs page of Olight’s website and entered in a return request. After uploading photos of the unit and describing the issue, they emailed me a PDF return label. I received a replacement unit a few days later. Unfortunately Olight was out of the Halloween limited edition lights, so they sent me a plain orange one. Far from disappointed, I was impressed with how easy Olight’s warranty return process was.
OLight turned heads when they released the Arkfeld EDC light a few years ago. The Arkfeld’s innovative flattened box design was an inspired departure from the barrel tube body of flashlights since the 19th century. This newest version, the Arkfeld PRO, adds both a UV inspection light and a green laser pointer to a high lumen output multi mode white LED.
The primary controls are an ergonomic dial and a single, if not completely intuitive, activation button on the side of the unit. The dial switches between white light, laser, and UV light. Its internal battery has charge indicator lights below the mode dial. It is recharged via OLight proprietary magnetic charging adapter calbe which is USB-A compatible. The magnetic charging port at the tail of the unit has the secondary function of allowing the flashlight to be attached to metal surfaces, like a car hood.
The Arkfeld features a deep cary clip which can be removed. The clip is 2-directional allowing it to be clipped into the brim of a cap to function as a headlamp. The body is a solid feeling box of aluminum that comes in a variety of colors and some special edition graphic paint jobs.
In my testing I was able to get more than it’s 1300 lumen advertised maximum brightness. It met my drop test and water proof testing. Fully recharged I got a runtime of about 140 minutes starting in Turbo mode which aligns with OLight’s specs.
I’ve been used to wearing a smaller and lighter EDC but despite the Arkfeld’s larger size and weight, its flattened design allows it to fit into most pants pockets with minimal printing or encumbrance. My only peevs with this otherwise near perfect EDC is that the simple one-click activation can lead to accidental activation in pocks and that a double-click could lead to accidental strobe activation.
OLIGHT debuted their newest models of their Arkfeld flat EDC flashlight and Baton. The Arkfeld now offers a UV mode in addition to being a flashlight and laser pointer. Their popular Baton compact EDC now comes with a powered charging case that features a USB-C port and a 5000mAh internal battery. It will recharge the Baton up to 5 times or can be used as a portable power bank.
A few years ago, I bought an OLIGHT PL-2 Valkyrie because it offered the best value in terms of price to lumen output. I liked the physical design of the Valkyrie and the PL-2 was one of the few +600 lumen lights priced under $150. When OLIGHT contacted me to review their soon to be released PL-Turbo Valkyrie I was eager to see how this new light compared to mine.
The PL-Turbo is an improvement on the Turbo Valkyrie offering a bump up from 250 lumens to a more blinding 800 lumens in the PL-Turbo, while sacrificing only a slightly shorter yet still impressive 515m throw. The other noticeable changes is a screw mount, an adjustable position mounting system, and surprisingly: a 60% drop in retail price.
Compared to my 1200 lumen PL-2, the PL-Tubo is 1/4″ longer and has a more matte black coated surface. Both are powered by a pair of C123A or rechargeable RCR123A batteries. Both share identical control button/panels which are some of the best in the category.
In my lumen testing I discovered that the PL-2 output 50% more than its specified 800 lumens. Many budget brand and knock-off weaponlights outrageously inflate their lumen numbers. It is laudable in that OLIGHT understated the PL-Turbo’s performance numbers.
The PL-Turbo retains the Turbo’s tight beam pattern; a product of its laser powered LEP illumination. Inside the narrow beam is an extremely bright and small hot spot. At 10ft, it appears as a 1ft wide circle that can function as an aim point. While the beam is narrower than OLIGHT’s other Valkerie or Baldr lights but its intensity offers sufficient bounce light to illuminate a residential room.
I don’t claim that any OLIGHT is as durable or as reliable as military tested weapon lights from US built brands. But this OLIGHT is more than sufficient to meet my average-civilian needs. With all of the PL-Turbo’s improvements to the older Valkyrie Turbo and at a lower price, its a no-brainer that the PL-Turbo is a good value.
Enter to Win an OLight weaponlight. Use your skill to SUBSCRIBE, JOIN or FOLLOW any or all of these Social Media Channels/Accounts. So there are multiple ways to enter.
1. Use the button below to email a screen capture of any of these pages to olight@moondogindustries.com
2. Include your full name and ship-to address (so I can confirm you live in the US or Canada)
3. Each subscription/follow is worth (1) entry per person. You may submit multiple screen caps in your email. Entries must be received no later than 11:59pm PST on June 15.
NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER. YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING DO NOT INCREASE WITH A PURCHASE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.
1. Eligibility
Void where prohibited by law. Must be 18 years of older to enter and residing in the USA or Canada. Moondog Industries and OLight employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, advertising and promotion agencies, employees’ immediate family members, are ineligible participate in the contest/giveaway.
Entrants must be willing and able to appear on YouTube to discuss the contest and post images of the prize on their social feed should they win the contest.
2. Sponsors
Olight USA and Moondog Industries are collectively known as SPONSORS. OLight USA7951 Angleton Ct. STE B, Lorton, VA, 22079 is supplying the prize(s) and shipping them directly to the winner. Moondog Industries is a game promotor based in San Francisco, CA is organizing the contest on behalf of OLIght to promote the OP: Bad Blood event for EMR Event Park and Evike.com
3. Agreement to Rules
By entering your contest, participants agree to abide by the Sponsors Official Rules and decisions. Moondog Industries and OLight retain the right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at their sole discretion. By submitting an entry, the participant agrees to accept the decision of the Sponsors as final and binding.
4. Entry Period
Baldr Mini entries must be received by between 12:00pm PST June 1 and 11:59pm PST June 15. Baldr Pro-R entries must be received between 12:00PST May 7, 2022 and 11:59pm May 31, 2022.
5. How to Enter
This contest requires your skill in navigating your phone or computer controls to screen capture an image of the following YouTube channels/Social Media accounts. Subscribe or Follow and make a screen capture of those pages showing a greyed out Subscribe button or indicator that your account is Following that page. Send a screen capture image file of any of those sites to olight@moondogindustries.com . One entry per person or per YouTube channel/Social Media account. Fraudulent methods of entry, photo retouched, or other methods of circumvention of the rules may result in the Sponsor invalidating a participant’s entries.
6. Prizes
The winner will receive an OLight Baldr Pro R weapon light shipped to them from Olight. Winner must be able to receive the prize by mail. Prize may be substituted at the sole discretion of OLight. Acceptance of the prize grants Sponsors permission to use the Winners entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.
7. Odds
Odds of winning is dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.
8. Selection and Notification of the Winner
The winner will be chosen at random by the Sponsors from among the entrants that demonstrated the skill to navigate the electronic entry and have met the minimum requirements. Winners will be contacted via the email used to enter the contest during the week of June 6, 2022 and announced June 12, 2022.
Sponsors are not liable for the winner’s failure to receive notification of winning if he or she provided a wrong email address or if their email security settings caused your prize notification to go into the spam or junk folder. If a winner does not respond within 24hrs of sending a notification, the Sponsors will select an alternate winner. Receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws.
9. Rights Granted by the Entrant
The Sponsors, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest have the right to use the participant’s submission, voice, likeness, image, statements about the contest, etc., for publicity, news, advertising, promotional purposes, trade, and so forth, without any further notice, review, consent, compensation or remuneration.
Participants shall defend or settle against such claims at their sole expense, and shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the Sponsor from any suit due to damage of or by the prize.
10. Terms & Conditions
Sponsor reserve the right to modify, suspend, cancel or terminate in the event that non-authorized human intervention, a bug or virus, fraud, or other causes beyond your control impact or corrupt the security, fairness, proper conduct, or administration of the contest/giveaway.
11. Limitation of Liability
Entry into this contest constitutes the participants agreement to release and hold harmless the Sponsors and its subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, etc., against all claims liability, illness, injury, death, loss, etc., that occurs directly or indirectly from participation in the contest or use/misuse of the awarded prize.
12. Disputes
As a condition of participating in the promotion, the participant agrees to resolve all disputes with an arbitrator designated by the Sponsors in the state of California, without resorting to any form of class action. Entrants waive all rights to punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, and waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.
13. Privacy Policy
Participants agree to abide by all privacy and NDA laws in the State of California and any federal laws of the United State of America.
14. Winners List
Participants may request a list of winners by contacting Moondog Industries for up to 1yr after the contest ends.
15. Social Media Platform Rules
Winners will agree to post a photo of the prize on their social media channels in such a way as does not violate any rules of that platform. The winners also agree to appear for an interview where they will discuss the prize and its performance. If there are functional problems with the prize, the winner agrees to make a good-faith effort to resolve all issues with the Sponsors prior to posting reviews or opinions about the prize.
16. Affirmation of Acceptance of and Agreement to All of the Official Rules
By entering the contest, the entrant has affirmatively reviewed, accepted, and agreed to all of the them.
Olight sent me a Baldr Pro R to test and evaluate. Taking it out of it’s packaging, I noted that it looked very much like my Valkyrie PL-2 albeit with a magnetic charging/control pad and without a battery door latch. It is approximately 1/2″ longer than a Valkyrie PL-2 and about 11g heavier at 126g.
The Baldr Pro R differs externally from the older non-rechargeable Baldr Pro which has its laser designator unit encased in housing below the main light. The newer R-model is a much more elegant design with the laser internal to the unit with only a small hole in the flashlight bell from which the laser beam emerges.
It shares identical main controls with both the Valkyrie and Baldr Pro. Two button/pads at the rear of the unit can be actuated by an index or middle finger of either hand. A quick double-tap switch the light from high and low output. Strobe mode is activated by simultaneously pressing both control buttons. A control ring near the crown of the unit, switches between light-only, laser and light, and laser-only modes.
It fits a standard Glock pistol (and pistols with a similar accessory rail), with a Glock (GL) sized cross-bar pre-installed on the mounting base. This cross-bar can be replaced with a Picatinny 1913 sized bar for more exacting fit on that mounting system but the standard GL cross-bar is compatible with Picatinny slots. I particularly like the O-lights latching system as it provides much faster mounting and detaching than either a Streamlight or Surefire taclight.
Conducting my home-made lumen testing, I usually let a light warm-up for 1-minute before starting my tests. Initially my readings placed the output at around 1880 lumens! But I discovered that after a little more than a minute, the Baldr’s output would drop and stabilize at around 680 lumens. I repeated my tests and noted the same drop at approximately 1-2 minutes of running the light on high mode. I hypothesized that the unit may have over-heating safety built into it as the unit was getting quite hot.
I contacted the Marketing Rep at Olight and she shared with me a chart from their engineers showing that at High mode, the device would go from 1350-500-300 lumens. Upon checking the manual, sure enough the performance diagram showed that a fully powered unit output 1350 lumens for only 1.5 minutes before it stepped down to 500 lumens for the next 40 minutes of run-time before dropping to 300 lumens for the final 13 minutes.
So the Baldr is really a 500 lumen light with a brief over-drive mode of 230% and not truly a 1350 taclight. Unfortunately this is an all-too-common marketing ploy by flashlight companies nowadays. That’s why you can’t take the lumen numbers at face value or at least look at the fine print (the Baldr’s packaging says 1350 Max Output),
In all other respects the flashlight worked flawlessly. The built-in green laser was bright and I could see it clearly at 120ft away at night. The laser can be turned on in conjunction with the light and easily seen in both high and low flashlight modes (though more easily in low). Checking with a laser bore-sighter, the unit was also perfectly sighted to my Glock 17 when I first mounted it; the laser can be adjusted for both windage and elevation with the included hex wrench.
Despite the misleading lumen numbers, I am impressed with the overall ergonomics and build of the Baldr Pro R. I’ll be mounting it on my personal sidearm (Glock 17 Gen3) for long-term testing.
The EZshoot Rail Mount LED Tactical Flashlight 750 Lumens Magnetic USB Rechargeable Weaponlight
The EZShot is a 750-lumen budget weapon light that tries to deliver the features of lights that are 2 to 5 times the price like Surefire, Streamlight, and Olight. Its over-built construction makes it appear chunky; presumably allowing it to withstand impact and physical abuse.
But perhaps they should have built it more like a sub than a tank. A lack of o-ring seals is its Achilles heel making it vulnerable to water creeping in through the lens and the head. On the plus side, if you hate strobe mode, you can only activate this through a separate button on the body that can not be activated accidentally. And after testing I can confirm that it does output more than 750 lumens.
For a budget weapon light, it functions well. But like a Gremlin, don’t get it wet.
There’s a lot to like about this mini tac light. It’s as bright or brighter than some full-sized weapon lights but don’t stick out awkwardly post the muzzle. Speaking of full-sized lights, I found out that the magnetic charger is not compatible with the Olight PL-PRO. So don’t lose the charger or you’re going to have to order another one from Olight. That’s the one main downside with this light, I kinda wish it was USB-C instead.
Overall there’s a lot I like about this light: it’s bright, weighs next to nothing on my pistol, and is easy to manipulate and activate. It’s a lot better than my XC-1. Its closest competitor is the Klarus GL-1 which is about as small, has an adjustable length mounting system, is also 600 lumens but also has a strobe mode. I know some real-life Operators hate strobe (for valid reasons), so if you want a non-strobe compact weapon light go with Valkerie Mini.
