![[Customer Review] Olight Prowess Review by Matt](https://cdn.olightstore.com.au/image/prowess-1-4a1r13.jpg.jpg)
If you are getting out into the bush, for whatever reason, you need to make sure that you have top quality equipment, especially at night. You can get away with a cheap torch, or a cheap bit of gear, sometimes. But chances are you are going to find that it fails on you when you need it, especially if there is an emergency. The Australian outdoors is a rough place and so you need good equipment you can rely on, that will not just get the job done, but exceed your expectations for what it is capable of. The Olight products, and in particular, the Olight Prowess fits that description. This is a high-quality LED torch that you can use in a variety of situations. In fact, I can say without reservation that this is the best torch I have owned so far.
The first thing I want to discuss about this torch is not what you might think is the most thing, but it is actually incredibly important; it is the packaging that it comes in. As I said above, if you want to go out into the Aussie bush at night that you need good high-quality equipment. Especially if you are hunting, hiking, or mountain biking at night. So, what happens if you fork out your hard-earned cash for a high-quality multipurpose light, and then find out that it was damaged in the box in transit? That would suck right? Well with Olight you don’t have to worry about that. Look at the quality of this packaging.
The box that the Prowess comes in is solid. Australia Post generally do a good job of getting these packages to your house. But no delivery system is perfect, and you might be ordering this in a part of the world where it takes a few different transit points to get to you. So, you want to know that the brand-new product you paid for is the product you actually get and that it is in good condition, and the Olight packaging gives you this assurance. It would take a lot of punishment to ruin the torch in that box. So, you can order this light knowing it will travel to you safely.
In the box you get the Prowess itself, which is IPX7 waterproof and can be dropped 1 meter safely, a wall mount and magnetic charger, a high quality USB-C cable and a manual. This light is powered with an internal 3.6-volt 5000mah rechargeable battery that is capable of pushing this torch to produce a maximum 5000 lumens! Think about that. I call that setting daylight, Olight call it Turbo. If you turn this torch on to Turbo in your bedroom at night, or lounge room, or any moderately sized living room, you will be blown away at how much it lights up the room.
Of course, the turbo setting cannot be used for as long as the normal settings, but it would be very useful if you were trying to find someone or get someone’s attention out in the bush. It is incredibly bright and shines up to 245 meters! The standard settings are low, medium and high. To use the different settings, press the button to turn on the torch then hold the button down and it will switch through these three settings. To put the torch on turbo hit the power button twice, and you will see what it can do straight away. To use the strobe setting press the button three times and watch it flash. This setting would be very useful for using in an emergency situation because the bright, quick flashing will get people’s attention. Trust me, once you see it, you will see why. It is bright.
The normal settings on this torch are pretty good as well. Low is 50 lumens, which is enough to find stuff in your tent at night. Medium is 300 lumens which is what you would find on most decent torches for outdoor standard use. High is a very big jump up at 1200 hundred lumens. I have some other decent torches, but this one beats them all. And you can also lockout the on/off switch by holding it down for more than two seconds, so you can transport the torch and not have it switch on by accident in your pack. Which is very useful. You don’t want to run out of battery for your light while hiking.
Here is an example of this torch lighting up my garden shed:
In this first picture here you can see the Prowess is on one of its brighter settings, shining down from the roof and it has lit up the entire shed. I turned the flash off on my phone camera, so all the light in the picture is from the Prowess. In the next picture below, you can see the work light that I have set up in my shed which I use when I need to go in there at night. It is from a hardware store and is plugged into a power outlet. Which light is brighter?
Figure 4: Standard Plugin Work Light
It is clearly the Olight Prowess that is brighter. Isn’t that remarkable? Look at that thing light up the shed. I put both lights in about the same spot so you can see how they brighten up the room. Remember the work light is a purpose-built work light that runs off plugged in power. The Prowess is a portable torch that can be used in a variety of situations, and it is superseding the power of the work light. Of course, you will not be able to run it for as long, because it needs to be charged. But you can take it many places that you cannot take that work light. So, this is an incredibly useful light.
Now, I hear you wondering, “Matt, how did you secure it to the roof of your shed to use it like that?” Well, this is one of the other remarkable uses of this Prowess torch. It comes in the box with a magnetic charging dock that is used to connect to the bottom of the torch and has a suction cup that can be added to the bottom of the charging dock. This charging dock connects to a USB-C charging cable that can be plugged into any standard USB charger. So, it charges with a magnetic connection on the bottom of the torch, and this magnet is quite powerful. I have attached it to many different metal surfaces and it does not fall off. You could knock it off, if you were not careful, but it will stay on there until you physically remove it. That is how I secured this torch to the roof of my shed.
You could also use it to work on your car, if you were on the side of the road, or needed extra light at night. Just stick this light to the bonnet, or somewhere where it cannot be knocked, and you will be able to see in the dark perfectly.
And if for whatever reason you need a little less light, then you can switch to its backlight mode. You might ask, why do you need a backlight mode? Well, sometimes you just don’t need it to be so bright. Maybe you are working on the car beside a tent at night, and don’t want to wake up the neighbours, maybe you just want a little less light for whatever reason, either way, this setting is pretty useful as well.
To switch the light to backlight mode there is a small switch in front of the on and off switch. Just flick it and you have a lower level of light that will last quite a while. On the lowest setting you can drop it down to 2 lumens. That is low and would be a great setting for using at night in a tent so that you don’t wake anyone else up. It would also be a useful setting to use while hunting so you don’t light up the whole bush around you and scare off every creature in the forest with the brightness of the power of this torch on full power. It can even be used as a mood light, because on this low moonlight setting it gives of a similar light level to candles. You could have a romantic dinner while out camping with this light. Theuses are many.
And because of another useful Olight product the Olight FB-1 bike mount, you can increase the usefulness of this light even more. This bike mount product allows you to attach any of the torches that will fit the mount onto your bike as a bike light. Olight do make some incredible bike lights and I will write a review of one of those soon. But with this mount you can turn the Prowess into an incredibly useful bike light, until you decide it is time to purchase a purpose built one. Here is the Prowess being used as a bike light, and I only have it on the high setting, this is not even on Turbo, but the light in incredibly bright.
The uses for this torch are many. And one thing I should mention before I finish is that this torch is clearly made of high-quality materials and feels solid and dependable in your hand. While I write this review I have a torch from another brand sitting right next to the Prowess. It is not a bad light, but in comparison it feels cheap, and nowhere near as solid. The Prowess outshines it in this way and many others. This might be a small thing to some people, but if you are paying for quality you want to know that what you are getting is quality. With the Olight Prowess from the way it works, to the way it looks, to the way it feels in the hand, you see and feel quality at every point. You can’t go wrong with a torch like this. I can highly recommend this product and I look forward to using it in different situations.
