This is the new 25,000-lumen Olight Marauder 3 (UK US). “Turns night into day” might be a cliché, but with this torch, it’s surprisingly accurate.
It combines a huge 25,000-lumen floodlight with a separate spotlight that can reach up to 1,000 metres. And this third-generation model adds a touch-sensitive switch that prevents accidental activation without making the torch a faff to turn on, a smart display with estimated remaining runtime, and a whopping 31,900mAh battery that doubles as a 30W power bank.
I’ll be seeing if it really can put out that claimed 25,000 lumens using my purpose-built TKlamp integrating-sphere flashlight tester, and of course taking it outside to see what it’s capable of in the real world.
Overview
You get a hard case, the torch itself, a holster, a lanyard that doubles as a USB-C charging cable, and an instruction manual. There’s an additional USB-C cable as well not shown in the photo. In some countries you also get a 30W wall charger.
This is one of the largest and heaviest LED torches I’ve owned, but considering the power it packs, it still feels surprisingly compact and fits comfortably in my hand.
It weighs 870g with the lanyard and measures 152mm long, with a 75mm head.
It was only when I put it alongside the Marauder Mini 2 that I really appreciated how much bigger it is — but you’re getting well over double the output and more than four times the battery capacity.
Mine is the black version, but it’s also available in Midnight Blue and Orange.
The Marauder 3 has a huge non-user-replaceable 31,900mAh 46950 EV-grade lithium-ion battery. That’s around 118Wh — more capacity than even my largest portable power bank.
By power-bank standards, its 30W USB-C output is fairly modest, but it supports Power Delivery, and you can also charge the torch itself at up to 30W.
The new smart display shows the estimated remaining charge time whilst it’s charging.
There’s enough capacity here to charge an iPhone 18 Pro around six times, or even fully charge a 13-inch MacBook Air, with plenty of capacity to spare.
So this is a genuinely useful emergency charger as well as a torch.
And although the integrated lanyard and charging cable is a little clunky, having a USB-C cable permanently attached to the torch is still very handy.
The USB-C port itself feels a little unnecessarily hidden — I still find myself hunting for it in low light. Olight has also dropped its magnetic charging with this torch, but with a battery this large it would have been pretty slow anyway, so I don’t think that’s a great loss.
One of my favourite new features is actually quite easy to overlook amongst all these huge lumen and battery numbers. With powerful torches like this, a lock is essential — the head can get hot enough to melt through a jacket pocket if it accidentally turns on. But having to unlock the torch every time you want to use it can be a pain.
The Marauder 3 has an incredibly simple but clever solution: a capacitive touch power button. When you press the button, the torch automatically unlocks and turns on, so you don’t even notice the lock is there. And if you’re wearing gloves, you can still unlock it by rotating the dial, just like on previous Marauder torches.
Like most Olight torches, the user interface is pretty straightforward. This switch selects flood, flood plus spot, or spot — and you intuitively push it forward as you push the beam further into the distance.
The rotary dial turns the torch on and gives you an almost stepless control of the brightness. Or you can hold down the power button to cycle through the different levels.
You’ve also got quick access to Moonlight mode by holding down the power button with the torch off. In spot mode that’s just 0.5 lumens and will run for an insane 14 months. Double-press for Turbo, and triple-press for Strobe with the torch on or off.
And it’s brilliant being able to see the estimated runtime on the display as you change modes. The higher outputs all step down, but the highest mode that doesn’t step down still gives you almost two days at 500 lumens, which is still plenty bright enough for most situations.
Performance
You’ll see just how much light this torch can produce shortly, but first I wanted to test that headline 25,000-lumen output a little more scientifically.
With a fully charged battery, I measured just over 23,000 lumens at turn-on, dropping to just under 22,000 lumens after 30 seconds, before falling very sharply to just under 3,000 lumens, where it remained steady.
These are still big numbers, but they are below Olight’s specifications, which is unusual in my experience. I checked the tester’s calibration with its calibration lamp and there were no issues there. I also wondered whether the extremely high output was affecting the measurement, but the lower levels came in below spec too — I measured the 500-lumen mode at around 400 lumens.
Olight have also introduced a red high-temperature warning LED on the head of the torch, which lights up to remind you that the head can get hot.
Measuring it with my thermal imaging camera, the indicator came on when the torch head reached around 65°C and turned off again when it dropped to around 50°C. While the indicator is on, you’re limited to level 4 and below, so a maximum of 5,000 lumens — which in my testing was around 4,000 lumens, dropping pretty quickly to a steady 3,000 lumens again.
It’s a helpful safety feature, and it’s useful to know why you can’t access the higher modes, but it can still be a little frustrating having to wait for the torch to cool down before you can use those higher modes again. And that can take a while, since there’s no active cooling on the Marauder 3, unlike some other high-output torches such as the Wuben X1 Pro.
My range measurements were much closer to Olight’s specifications. I got 933 metres from the spotlight, compared to Olight’s claimed 1,000 metres, and a very impressive 1,075 metres with flood and spot combined, slightly exceeding Olight’s claimed 1,050 metres.
I also measured 649 metres of range in flood mode.
The floodlight uses 16 LEDs arranged in a ring around a single central LED for the spotlight.
Using my colour spectrometer, I measured the flood at a fairly neutral 5440K, while the spot is a much cooler 7500K.
Colour accuracy isn’t great from either, which is fairly typical for Olight torches, with CRI measurements of just 69 for the flood and 68 for the spot.
Both also had a slightly positive Duv, giving the beams a subtle green tint.
Beamshots
Next, I took the Marauder 3 outside to see what the flood and spot beams actually look like in the real world. Please see the accompanying video for all the beam shots.
I also compared the torch with a couple of other high-output torches, the Marauder Mini 2 and Wuben X1 Pro, as well as the compact and popular, albeit less powerful, 4,800-lumen Olight Seeker Ultra.
Conclusions
So who is the Marauder 3 actually for? Clearly, most people don’t need a 25,000-lumen torch, but I can certainly see situations where this sort of output and range would be genuinely useful. Living on the edge of Dartmoor, I could see our local Search and Rescue team finding a torch like this particularly useful. It might not be something you’d use all the time, but it’s still small enough to have in your backpack.
And if you’re a torch enthusiast like me, I probably don’t need to persuade you why you might want 25,000 lumens.
I was a little disappointed that it didn’t quite achieve that 25,000 lumens, especially as Olight’s claims are normally so accurate, but over 23,000 lumens even for a short while is impressive. And occasionally at turn on I did see it jump over 24,000 lumens.
Despite its size and weight, it still feels surprisingly manageable. I also really like the new touch-sensitive lock and smart display, and that enormous battery gives you some seriously impressive runtimes as well as a useful 30W power bank.
Purchase links:
UK: https://uk.olight.com/s/1HNBVG
US/Global: https://www.olight.com/s/NVD78R
There’s a big Olight sale on at the moment. Use code OFF30 for an additional £30 off the Marauder 3, plus you’ll get a FREE Arkfeld Ultra worth £119.99.
Olight has also just released the new Oclip 2 Pro and Oclip 2 Ultra. They’re fantastic little torches, and I’ll hopefully have a review of them soon:
UK: https://uk.olight.com/s/WR7DOR
US: https://www.olight.com/s/40RYVW
Purchasing through these links helps support the channel at no additional cost to you.
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