Olight R50 Seeker Pro Review

Olight R50 Seeker Pro – 4 stars

Summary

The Olight R50 Seeker Pro is all about brightness. 3,200 lumens to be precise. But only for 90 seconds at a time before it cuts out. Look at this as a 1,000 lumens torch with a turbo mode. It gets hot though! I personally find the heat that this torch builds up in turbo, on it’s way to thermal cut-out, to be a little disconcerting. But if you need it’s impressive 3,200 lumens for short periods of time, then it’s potentially a great solution. It has a fixed flood beam with a slight spot.

It’s easy to hold, like other torches based on the thick 26650 battery, and has Olight’s neat magnetic tailcap charging USB cable.

Brightness

The maximum brightness of the Olight R50 Seeker Pro is 3,200 lumens. But only for 90 seconds, when thermal cutout protects the torch from overheating by dropping brightness to 1,500 Lumens. Then 10 minutes later down to it’s maximum sustainable brightness of 1,000 lumens. The first photo below, taken on Datchworth Green, is at 1,000 lumens, the second in the 3,200 lumens turbo mode. In both photos the generous flood is obvious, with the village sign 10 metres away clearly lit in both. But the white building (The Plough pub) about 100 metres away is much more visible in the second, demonstrating the usefulness of the turbo mode.

Useful for

The Olight R50 Seeker PRO is suited to applications where a large flood beam of very high brightness is occasionally required from a physically compact torch. Big outdoor or indoor spaces. Scanning a large park for the dog. Add it’s IPX8 water resistent rating to the turbo 3,200 lumens brightness and it also crosses over to the ‘search’ category of torches. This torch is really in between normal handheld torches and it’s more powerful relation the coke can torch.

Notable features

The fixed spot/flood beam is a useful design, allowing the user to see a reasonable distance at the same time as lighting a large area, though it is more flood than spot. For the compact head size this is a useful beam.

The magnetic tailcap charger on the R50 Seeker PRO is a neat, compact charging solution, the other end connecting to a USB socket. But the cable is proprietary to this range of Olight torches, so don’t forget it when this torch leaves home as it doesn’t charge with any other cable. That magnetic tailcap can also, usefully, be used to fix the R50 Seeker PRO to a metal object.

There is also a button lock feature, so it’s less likely to be turned on accidentally, activated by holding the button for 3 seconds whilst off. Then the same to turn it off.

The R50 Seeker PRO has 5 functions: turbo, high, med, low & strobe. Double clicking the button whilst on or off launches turbo.

• Turbo: 90 seconds on 3,200 lumens

When turning the torch on it remembers the last brightness setting:

• High: 2 hours 40m on 1000 lumens (1500 lumens for 10 minutes)
• Mid: 7 hours 30m on 400 lumens
• Low: 50 hours on 60 lumens

Holding the button down, whilst on, cycles through the brightness settings.

A triple click, whilst on or off, accesses the strobe function.

Design

Fairly plain, minimalist, and noticeably Olight in design, this is a neat little package for it’s incredible brightness.

In terms of usability, accessing all the features is relatively simple. From first looking at the instructions to figuring it out is more straightforward than some other torches.