Olight Sphere Review
I like to read. When I can I like to read at night when everything is a lot quieter and calmed down from the busyness of the day and the early evening. There are so many different ways to read now. You can read on a Kindle device, or on a tablet or iPad, and on your phone, there are heaps of other dedicated readers and reading apps you can use to read in various formats. But you can’t beat reading a nice old fashioned hard back. The disadvantage of reading an old-fashioned paper book, though, is that you need a place which is both comfortable and has good lighting. But have you noticed sometimes these two things don’t come together that well? When reading on a tablet you have your own inbuilt light, but with a paper book you do not have this luxury. So, what you are to do?
Well, that is where something like the Olight Sphere comes into play. I have a comfortable couch where I like to read, but the problem with that seat at night is that my ceiling light does not quite sit in the right position, so the page I am looking at is not properly lit up. I can’t use a lamp, because there is no room for a side table next to the couch. I could pay for a light to be put in by an electrician, but I had one quote to me how much it would cost to put in a light in that spot and it was expensive. It did not seem like a good use of money. But without even realizing they have done so, Olight have solved my problem with the Olight Sphere
This brilliant little light works just like a low power downlight LED light. But the big difference is you can set it up wherever you want. The light is magnetic so you can mount this light on any metal surface (not Aluminium of course, which is not magnetic). Sure, you can get magnetic lights like this in other places too, but this light also has a mounting option for sticking it onto non-magnetic surfaces. It comes with this small well-crafted metal coin in the box which is metal on one side and on the other has 3M tape so you can stick it to a wall, or cupboard door. You can see the coin in the pictures below:
As you can see the small metal coin simply sticks to the wall. Before mounting it, I cleaned the wall with isopropyl alcohol (IPA) which you can get at any hardware store, and then it was simply a matter of letting the wall dry and then sticking it on. Here is the light on the wall:
Figure 3: The Olight Sphere on the wall.
This is the same light in the same spot of the wall, just obviously in the right picture it is
turned on to one of its colour settings. This is where the light get’s really interesting.
When you get the light it will be in lockout mode, charging it brings it out of lockout mode, or in future you can hold down the middle button in the back for a couple of seconds as well to unlock it. When you turn the light on for the first time, by pressing the middle button on the back once, it will come onto a moderate white light mode. If you then hold down the button on the back you can change the brightness. This is not meant to be a very bright light, at full power it is 75 lumens, and at its lowest setting you can put it on only one lumen.
To change the setting on the light manually, you press the button on the back once at a time, and you will get a red light, a red flashing light, a rainbow colour light, a blue sky colour light, a rainbow flashing light, and a pulsing rainbow light. As soon as my young daughter saw this light she said, “I want one, that is so cool.” The colour modes are pretty striking, especially the modes where you can get the light to swirl, it looks like there is a moving cloud of colour inside the sphere. Snow globes were very cool back in their day, but this thing puts a light like that to shame. But wait, there is more.
Not only can you manually select these different colours, you can connect this light to your phone to allow touch screen control of the light, and give it a whole bunch of different, very cool light colours and settings. To do this you will need a smart phone, or tablet device with an app store, and you need to go into the app store and search for the Olight app. There are two in the google play store, make sure you install the Olight Hubb app, this will allow you to connect your light to your phone. It connects via Bluetooth, so to connect it, turn the light on by pressing the middle button on the back once, then press it again 3 times quickly, and it will start flashing green. This means it is in pairing mode. Once you have paired the light, then you can control it with the app.
Here is what the app interface looks like:
As you can see, it has the battery charge indicator on the top left, and the on and off switch on the top right, with an image of the light just below. The colour of the light on the app will correspond to the setting you have it switched to, which in this case is sunset. There are four categories of settings, all with their own unique style.
Figure 5: Olight Hubb app, for Olight Sphere.
The green bar in the middle there indicates the brightness level, which you can control from the app, or from the back of the light. The image of the light here does not do the light its full justice. You have to see this thing in action for yourself. Especially the fireball setting, which is epic. It is a little bit like having a portable mini-lava lamp which you can set up wherever you like.
You might have also noticed that there is a “Music Rhythm” setting as well.
This allows you to sync this light with your music player, so that the light flashes to the rhythm of the music. This setting has its own light cycle, which flashes between different colours and is pretty impressive. It will be interesting to see if they add different settings over time in the app, but the rhythm setting as is works very well. I have an old school CD player with a light on the front, and it looks pretty good to see this light flashing next to that player, which has its inbuilt light:
Figure 7: Olight on metal beam next to my old school cd player.
The sphere works very well. I notice though that if you close down the app and use other apps for too long it will switch out of rhythm mode, so just be aware of that.
Of course, as with all other Olight products, your Sphere comes in solid packaging, so you don’t have to worry about it getting damaged in transit.
In the box you get the Sphere itself, a magnetic charging cable, two little eyes in a plastic bag, the magnetic coin and a detailed and very helpful instruction manual. These Olight manuals are good too, as they are detailed and actually show you how to use the product, not like some that come from other companies. Just a note about the two little eyes, when you stick them on don’t press too hard, because you might crush one like I did.
This light would make a fantastic night light for your son or daughter, or you can use a bunch of them to light up a room for a party. You can use it for reading as I did, but only if it is set up close to you, as it is not meant to be a very bright light. But this works out well for reading at night, because you can put it next to you and read, and it won’t be harsh on your eyes, even on the brightest setting. Of course, like other Olight products it is waterproof, in this case IP56, and so if you do give this to your young son or daughter, you don’t have to worry about them drowning it, as long as it is not submerged for too long, of course.
This is a very cool product. I recommend you check it out.
