The Olight Prowess is an interesting new torch from Olight. It has a massive 5000 lumen floody main output, but what makes it stand out is its 800 lumen secondary lamp. This ring light sits underneath its relatively large head and has a soft white light. A sort of lantern mode, which could be perfect for camping.
I’ll run through its features and thoroughly test all its claims to find out if it’s the right torch for you. I have a one minute YouTube Shorts video on the torch if you’re interested.
Overview
The Prowess comes with a hard nylon reinforced plastic holster with a bracket to attach it to, a USB-C charging base with a suction pad and a sticky pad, a USB-C charging cable and a user manual.
There’s a proprietary 5000mAh 21700 battery already installed – you just need to unscrew the tailcap and remove the protective film before turning it on.
You can’t use standard 21700 cells in this torch.
There’s two ways to charge the torch. You can use the supplied USB-C charging base, or you can use an optional magnetic charging cable that comes with many of Olight’s torches or is available separately for around £10 or $10.
The charging base has a ¼” tripod mount to attach to any tripod. Which brings me to the unique selling point of this torch. It has an impressive 5000 lumen front facing beam, but also a rear facing 800 lumen area lamp, which works best mounted on a tripod.
The torch is made almost entirely of an aluminium alloy and typical of Olight the finish is very good. Currently it’s only available in black. It’s not quite as robust as other Olight torches with only an IPX7 waterproof rating and 1m drop rating, perhaps something to do with the rear lamp. The head and tail cap has notches that stops the torch from rolling off your table. It feels very comfortable but not as grippy as the more compact Seeker 4 Pro. It weighs 269g and is 143mm long with a 49mm head and 30mm body. This won’t fit in your trouser pocket, but it fits in my jacket pocket ok.
Like most Olights there’s a very simple user interface which is intuitive to use. You choose between the front and rear LEDs with a switch. With the switch in the forward position, the side button turns the front beam on and off. With the torch on or off a double press activates the 5000 lumen Turbo mode, and a triple press the strobe mode. With the torch off, press and hold the side button to enter the 20 day 5 lumen Moonlight mode, which isn’t super dim for a Moonlight mode.
With the torch on, holding down the side button cycles through a 50 hour, 50 lumen low mode, a 10 hour, 300 lumen medium mode and a 1200 lumen high mode. The 1200 lumen high mode runs for 150 minutes before dropping to 300 lumens for 30 minutes. And according to Olight the 5000 lumen Turbo mode runs for 3 minutes before dropping to 1200 lumens for 140 minutes. I’ll test these claims shortly. The torch remembers the last brightness mode used, apart from Turbo.
You can also lock out the torch to prevent accidentally turning it on with a 2 second press of the side switch. Wait for Moonlight mode to turn off. A shorter long press disables lockout mode and enters Moonlight mode.
With the switch in the rear position the torch turns on with the rear light. Press and hold the side switch to smoothly ramp up the brightness to 800 lumens which lasts for up to 20 minutes before dropping to 600 lumens for 135 minutes. Press and hold again to smoothly reduce brightness. When the rear lamp reaches maximum or minimum brightness, it flashes to inform you. This brightness is memorised. With the torch on or off, a double press turns on the torch in Turbo mode. A long press with the torch off turns it on at minimum brightness. With the torch on, a double press of the side button activates Turbo mode. Another double press takes it to the lowest brightness setting.
The side switch also operates as a battery indicator. Green for over 60% battery remaining, orange for 10-60% and red for 5-10%. It blinks red when the battery is less than 5%. In Moonlight mode you’ll only see the blinking red indication – otherwise the battery level indicator is off so as not to interfere with this low output mode.
Performance
The main beam on the Prowess comprises 7 cool white LEDs with a colour temperature I measured as 5519K with my colour spectrometer, which is at the lower end of its spec’d 5500 – 6500K which I prefer.
Unlike a few recent releases from Olight, there isn’t a warmer white option for the front LEDs, but the rear area lamp I measured as a very warm 2985K.
As usual with Olight, colour accuracy is pretty poor for both lights but the rear lamp is better with a CRI of 73, compared to the slightly lower than spec’d 67 for the front light. But thankfully both the front and rear lights are close to neutral with only a small amount of tint and a DUV of 0.009 and -0.0014 respectively.
Next I tested the runtime in its 5000 lumen Turbo mode with a fully charged battery in my calibrated DIY lumen chamber. I got 5265 lumens at turn on, which only dropped to 5206 lumens at the ANSI FL1 standard 30 second mark but then dropped quite dramatically at just over 2 minutes to reach just under 1200 lumens by around 3 minutes where it remained for a further 1 hour 20 minutes before dropping to 335 lumens for the remainder. So it met Olight’s claims with regard to its output, at least in my measurements, but runtimes were considerably shorter.
I did measure the temperature of the torch with my thermal imaging camera. After just over 2 minutes the head reached around 50°C – which feels pretty warm to the torch. The temperature then started coming down, so it appears the torch is being thermally regulated, dropping its output based on its temperature. Outside in real use, typically with a cooling breeze, runtimes will likely be a little better.
Charging the torch with USB-C took a fairly lengthy 2 hours 45 minutes charging at a maximum of 2A. I’d really like to start seeing faster charging with big batteries like this, with perhaps support for USB Power Delivery. You can only use the moonlight, low and medium front beam modes and lower brightness rear lamp modes when the torch is charging.
There’s no proximity sensor on this torch, so be careful leaving it in turbo or high mode in your jacket pocket. Head down on a table, the bezel is cranulated which does at least remind you if you’ve left it on.
Both the front and rear beam of the Prowess are very floody, but the 5000 lumen beam still has 245m or 15,010 candela of throw because of its impressive brightness.
There’s barely any hotspot – it looks very similar to the 4600 lumen Olight’s Seeker 4 Pro with 260m of throw – so just a fractionally tighter hotspot.
The rear lamp can be used table mounted but the spread is quite limited. It works much better mounted on a tripod, or attached to the applied wall bracket.
Conclusions
The Olight Prowess is an interesting torch. In a lot of ways it’s very similar to the Olight Seeker 4 Pro I’ve already reviewed, just bigger. It has a similar output and floody beam, and also runs off a 21700 battery. They both have a USB-C and magnetic charging option, but the USB-C charging isn’t integrated like it is on Olight’s Warrior X for example. You still have to remember to have the holster with the Seeker 4 Pro or the charging base with the Prowess, or bring the optional and proprietary magnetic charging cable. It’s not ideal, but at least there is a USB-C charging option.
The extra size allows for the secondary reverse lamp which does work well on a tripod, but just standing on its base it’s rather limited, covering only a small area. Something like the side light on this Sofirn IF23 is arguably more useful if you’re not going to have a tripod with you. It would be useful if Olight included an accessory to hang the torch from its bezel to use the torch inside a tent for instance, although it wouldn’t be difficult to fashion something from a piece of string.
I still do like this torch though. It’s very simple to operate, super bright, and has decent runtimes. And the reverse light does make it a great option for camping if you have it appropriately positioned.
If you need more help trying to find the perfect torch, take a look at my roundup of pocket, keyring, and head torches.
Buy direct from Olight – it helps support this site and my YouTube channel and if you use the discount code GIDON6 you’ll get an extra £5 including on sale items.
Olight UK 6th Anniversary Sale now on – free torch for new users.
Olight Prowess:
UK: https://www.olightstore.uk/s/G5HSZ3
US: https://www.olightstore.com/s/16PCLO
Leave a Reply