Olight Warrior: Best flashlights for personal security around your car

Olight Warrior X Pro and Olight Warrior Mini flashlight review: From the point of view of enhancing your personal security in, and around your car.

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I’d suggest personal security when you are in and around your car is important, and you should be considering it.

Number-one item on the ‘must have’ agenda there: a super-bright LED flashlight. (Bear in mind I’m not a lawyer. None of this report is legal advice.)

This is the Olight Warrior Mini - my new, all-time favourite flashlight for everyday carry. It’s brilliant. (Yes - pun intended.)

Olight is huge in military and law-enforcement, especially in the USA. I didn’t even know they had an outpost here in ‘Straya. But they reached out to me, and here we are, reviewing the Warrior Mini, and it’s big brother - the Warrior X Pro. Importantly, Olight has no influence over this report.

But why should you even carry a flashlight? (Especially if you’ve survived this long without one.) I mean, here in ‘Straya bad men tend not to ride over the hill, one evening and put everyone to the sword, inconveniently. To which I would retort: When did Noah build the Ark? Before the rain, dude.

Plus, this is not not all about defence and violence - it’s about support in a range of foreseeable situations, out there. Such as, say you can break down somewhere remote, middle of the night. Try changing a tyre by Braille. You’d kill for a flashlight. Checking fuses. Seeing where all that water is leaking from. Or when you just dropped that screw, those keys … whatever, in the dark.

I know you can do some of this with a phone. But perhaps you drive around a bend, middle of the night, out in the boonies. There’s a crash. It’s a bad one. You’re the first responder. People are hurt. 20,000 serious injuries on Australian roads annually. This could easily happen to you.

If this does happen to you, you need to park your car to stop someone else crashing into you. You’re going to need a flashlight to assess the victims and help. Find your first aid kit, which I hope you are carrying. Gotta build the Ark before the rain.

Alternatively, you might just park one day in a nice, seemingly safe spot. Lots of people around. Broad daylight. You go off and … help cure cancer. Feed the homeless. When you come back, it’s dark. You’re alone. Or, maybe, not alone, in the worst possible way. It’s not the same environment as before. Like, it’s just not. You are particularly vulnerable to attack getting into and out of your car, alone. And between the car and your home if you park on the street.

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Attacks of this nature are generally ambushes. There’s an X. You’re standing on it. That’s bad. You’re also playing catch-up, because your attacker is in motion. You’re still figuring it out. It’s asymmetric. So you have to be better than them. You’ve gotta get off the X, pivot, and balance things up. And a good flashlight: such an asset, in the dark.

Let’s talk about the Warrior X Pro and the Warrior Mini - and what each one is especially good at.

Warrior Mini - super bright. 1500 lumens in boost mode. That’s, like, painful.

Super light. Goes in your pocket. You won’t notice it [LOOK DOWN] down there. Carrying one is not in any way an impediment to daily life. You can run, climb, sit in the driver’s seat - it’s not uncomfortable. It’s just there, ready. Good to go. It’s USB rechargeable. We’ll get to that.

The pocket clip: Orients the flashlight, bezel-up. Believe it or not, this bezel-up versus bezel down thing is hotly debated … in certain circles. I’m more of an ‘in your pocket’ kind of dude, frankly. Bezel to the rear - switch forward. Better for deployment under pressure, at least for me.

Here’s why: you unlock your car, one evening. Hand on the door handle. Then you notice a dude, because he’s about to attack you. Which seems surreal, but, hey, it’s happening. Gotta adapt. Cortisol, noradrenaline - big spike there. Fight or flight. Hard to innoculate yourself against that. Peripheral vision shuts down. The world goes into slo-mo, like the Matrix. Your intellect goes out the window. Your fine motor skills evaporate. That’s just physiology.

You do not rise to the challenge in this situation. You fall back on any practise you’ve done. Ingrained habits. Frankly I think everyone should have basic fight training, seeing as violence has been part of the human condition - but only for the past 200,000 years or so. Maybe I’m wrong. But here we are. If the world turns to Hell, you might as well be Satan, as opposed to some low-level shit-kicker.

Floating in the pocket, switch forward, means you get grip confirmation inside the pocket. Minimal risk of dropping the light. Flashlight comes out. Thumb on the button. No fine motor skills required. Good to go. It helps if you practise.

I would never buy a flashlight where the ‘on’ button isn’t on the back. If it’s on the barrel, you need to index it rotationally to get it on. Takes too long. Requires too many fine motor skills. Plus, you can’t blaze the target with your guard up, which is a huge negative. An end switch for tactical deployment is the only way to go.

The button on the barrel of the Olight Warrior Mini changes modes and things of that nature - which is fine when you’re not under pressure. But the end switch does exactly what you need it to, under pressure. There’s actually six operational modes: ‘Boost’ for 1500 retina-scorching lumens, ‘high’ for 500, ‘medium’ for 120, ‘low’ for 15 and ‘moonlight’ mode for just one lumen (surprisingly useful for rooting around in a bag, or the footwell of the car, or a tent, if you don’t want to trash your night vision).

‘Boost’ mode only runs for four minutes - then the battery hits 33 per cent and the output drops. But conflicts demanding ‘boost’ mode tend to be over well within that time frame, so it’s beyond adequate. ‘High’ mode lasts for a little over three-and-a-half hours, which is very practical. You get 18 hours on ‘medium’, 150 hours on ‘low’ and 45 days on ‘moonlight’. And hey, if you can’t find your wallet in that bag within six weeks - it’s probably somewhere else. Just saying...

Two tactical modes - you can have 500 lumens with a half press and the full 1500 of ‘boost’ mode with a hard press. That’s the factory default setting. Or you can change it to boost mode on light press, and strobe mode on a hard press - which is ‘boost’ at 1500 lumens switching on and off at 13 Hertz. Very disorienting

The Warrior Mini is out of the pocket, in your hand, correctly oriented, thumb on the button, blazing the target, in boost mode, one firm press, in just a few seconds - best case scenario. It’s awesome. Of course, in winter, you might have to defeat an outer garment to get to that pocket.

Gotta stress here that real violence is not like Hollywood. Flashlights aren’t weapons. They’re really effective deterrents. See, it’s very hard for someone to hit you or stab you, or club you, or even shoot you, if they can’t see you properly. A couple of seconds, right down the barrel on ‘boost’, all they’re seeing is purple splotches for the next few minutes.

In this situation, it’s very easy for you to exploit the target’s disorientation and mount an effective counter-attack. If you don’t know how to do this, go to a boxing gym, muay Thai, MMA, ju jutsu - learn how to punch, elbow and kick. It’s quite therapeutic.

In an actual fight, as opposed to Hollywood, that first serious hit on the chin, the nose, the solar plexus - whatever - it’s over. Same in a boxing match. Professional fighters are just really good at not getting hit in those vulnerable spots.

In close quarters, at punching and kicking range, if your opponent nearly has his hands on you, you can hold the Warrior Mini with your guard up, and you can strike to defend yourself just as you would, empty handed. In a proportionate, legal way, naturally. #NotALawyer

It’s pretty covert in your hand, as well, being only about as long as your palm is wide.

Flashlights make lousy weapons - but they are excellent at disorienting someone who is attacking you, allowing you to neutralise the threat, in a sort of non-Reservoir Dogs way.

Cletus even designed this killer mod - the CVD ghetto hands-free kit - for his personal Warrior Mini. I know it looks like it’s just a PVC tube offcut with a slit in it, left over from Project Moonshine, but it’s clearly a great deal more complex than that. Great for getting both hands wrapped around the Mighty King without paying over the odds for reconstructive dentistry down the track.

It works really well. I’m thinking of getting one. Cletus van Damme - deadset genius. Just saying.

Warrior X Pro is substantially bigger, and 40 per cent brighter - 2100 lumens in boost mode, which is practically a light saber. You can actually feel the heat coming off it, on your face, at arm’s length…

You get two modes - boost and then 300 lumens. Boost lasts for two minutes - still more than adequate, in the domain of Operation Reservoir Dogs - and mode two delivers 300 lumens for eight hours on a full charge.

You can certainly go hand to hand with a Warrior X Pro - but it’s a bit clunkier to punch like that. It’s not heavy enough to be a baton, it’s not an especially good striking weapon, and if you punch with it in your hand, you have to worry about the head of the flashlight dragging on the target, tweaking your wrist and/or getting dislodged from your hand when it does so. Especially if you hook with your knuckles horizontal, as opposed to palm facing in.

But for sheer, blazing light output, Warrior X Pro is friggin’ awesome. The so-called ‘pocket’ clip faces the other way (bezel down). It’s a bit big to carry in a pocket anyway, frankly, but in a pinch the clip could aid retention. This is more the kind of flashlight you’d carry on a belt, in a rig, or in a bag.

In a bag, you can clip it like this, on an internal pocket - which is just right for drawing in the hand, correctly oriented and good to go.

So, before I let you go, I should tell you that these are unequivocally the best flashlights I’ve ever used. You’d be happy with either one. It just depends - you need to decide which one is right for you. As an engineer I love the build quality. These things are bulletproof. Designed to last for years. Grip retention is rock-solid - bare-handed or wearing gloves.

They’re both IPX8 rated - meaning full immersion in water down to two metres. Warrior Mini is drop rated at 1.5 metres, while the Warrior X Pro is rated to survive a three-metre drop. Neither torch rolls away if you drop it, owing to the pocket clip on the Mini, and the chunky square-ish thingo on the X Pro.

Olight is kinda obsessed with magnets - in a good way (and they do awesome packaging, if that matters). Both flashlights have a properly genius magnetic USB charging base. It just self-locates, which is really slick, and the magnet on the flashlight tail is strong enough to stick to the car, freeing up both hands for repairs and whatnot.

Both these torches come with lanyards, too, but I kinda hate lanyards. Too hard to deploy under pressure, and there’s a risk of them getting entangled on the way out of your pocket or bag, or with your opponent when you’re up close and … ahhh … let’s call it … personal.

It’d be great if the pocket clips were reversible, because then you’d be able to choose the orientation you prefer, and that doesn’t seem the greatest of design challenges to me. Additionally, I’d rather the pocket clip on the Warrior Mini were matte black instead of shiny blue - but I am digging pretty deep here, for criticism. And I’d like them to charge faster (it’s 3.5 hours with a 1.5-amp USB supply for the Mini and 5.5 hours with a 2-amp supply for the X Pro). None of this stuff is a deal breaker for me, and no tool is perfect.

Which one should you buy? To me, the Warrior X Pro is the perfect torch to live in the car or in a bag, or at the bedside table, kinda thing. In the car and at home you’d just leave it connected to the USB; ready to rip, and fully charged. Yoda would be right at home wielding a Warrior X Pro. It’s incredibly bright and kinda idiot-proof. Not that Yoda was an idiot. Au contraire.

But for personal security every day … if you’ve got a pocket, that Olight Warrior Mini should be in it. It’ll last you until the heat-death of the universe, and it’s got a million uses - only about 87,532 of which are potentially violent. So, on balance, it’s an instrument of peace and harmony (except when it’s not).

I think you’re a nut if you don’t carry one - it could easily save your life, or someone else’s. If you build the ark before the rain. You could turn the tables on some scumbag, or just make your life a whole lot easier if the world tilts one day, without warning, somewhere out there. Links in the description. Don’t forget - promo code AEJC10 for 10 per cent off after the Black Friday sale. Thanks for watching. Get one.

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