OLight M20 Warrior Special Operations

Operator7

13 Aug 2012

Flashlights in Airsoft serve any of four purposes: you want the cool factor of having a realistic looking AEG with all the accessories you see on real steel; or you want to play at night; or you want the extra edge to flash your opponent temporarily blind; or you are in Law Enforcement or Armed Forces and want to train with a similar setup you use at work.

Those are all great excuses for going out and buying a flashlight, but you can add those classic reasons such as having the handy in emergency situations as power outages, and more domestic uses such as taking the dog for a walk and using it when the street light is broken to avoid stepping something smelly, or simply to flash any potential threats that might take a try at your wallet.

If having a flashlight is so useful why not get a good one? OLight produces some fine LED flashlights widely used by government agencies, law enforcement, military and hunting.

LED Flashlights have become more and more popular due to several reasons such as low power consumption and high power output, and the compact size of the LED’s are usually the more important ones.

So now we are going to see what does all this mean for Airsoft and how does the M20 Warrior behave in some interesting scenarios.

THE SPECIAL FORCES BUNDLE

OLight had the courtesy to send me via their distributor EL CALDEN in Spain a very complete bundle called the Olight M20 Warrior Special Forces Version which comes in a transport case with several accessories that add value to the Flashlight:

1 x M20 Flashlight
1 x Holster
1 x Lanyard
2 x Spare O-rings
1 x Spare fluorescent tail cap rubber boot
1 x 1 x battery magazine

The Warrior also features a removable metal pocket clip that is included and already pre-installed, which I immediately removed. They also added two very important accessories for Airsoft: the remote pressure switch and the weapon mount. These however are purchased separately.

The Flashlight can be purchased without the accessories or getting them in a bundle like this which is cheaper than buying all the items separately. The Flashlight alone costs around 90€ and this bundle is sold for around 120€.

OPERATION AND FEATURES

Operation of the Flashlight couldn’t be simpler and easier, with a rubber switch located on the tailcap that works both as an on/off switch and also as a pressure switch. Also on the tailcap, you’ll find another rubber switch which is used to cycle through the three levels of power: low, medium, high brightness and a strobe function. I really liked the switches, since they are easy to operate and are very rugged at the same time, without compromising operation.

The Flashlight is made up of three parts: the tailcap, the battery tube and the head where all LEDs are housed and all the electronics that make this a cutting edge Flashlight.

The electronics play an important role since they are responsible for a series of features that OLight points out such as the memory function that remembers the last function you used, an Advanced Digital Power Management System to provide the best brightness during the duration of the batteries and finally, a reverse polarity protection circuit that prevents the Flashlight from dying on you in case you accidentally install the batteries incorrectly.

I personally witnessed the power management feature which manages the batteries by not letting you use the brightest setting when the battery power level is already very low. This way you won’t have the brightest setting, but you will surely have more run time since whenever I tried to switch to the brightest setting the flashlight would switch back to the lowest brightness, allowing me only to use it in low or mid brightness.

Installing the batteries is also quite simple, all you have to do is unscrew the tailcap and insert the specially built battery magazine. This magazine is quite interesting since it serves as a holder for the two CR123 batteries the Warrior takes and makes it easy to quickly change the batteries out in the field. They also help silencing the noise that can be heard on some flashlights caused by the batteries colliding against the tube of the Flashlight when you are moving.

I did notice that the Olight branded batteries included with the Warrior were very hard to insert and remove from the magazine. But once I tried some other battery brands it became much easier since they would slide right in.

One piece of advice is to keep your hands and finger away from the lens since it does heat up a lot.

QUALITY, BRIGHTNESS AND BATTERY DURATION

The whole body of the Warrior is precision-machined from aircraft alloy aluminum and it is protected with a rugged Type III black hard anodized finish, resistant to impacts and abrasions, and it's built to Mil-Spec: MIL-STD-810F.

All the case parts are incredibly tough and handle some beating pretty well, especially when I have the flashlight mounted on my AEG and sometimes it accidentally falls or bumps into walls. It also features a great looking strike bezel made out of stainless steel which is removable.

The Warrior is also water resistant to over one meter thanks to the Double o-ring seals, and as you can see in the following video, it will continue to work great in the water.

Weighing just 120.5 g (4.25 oz) without batteries, under 6 oz it is a lightweight solution, especially if you want to attach the Warrior to your AEG, so unlike other tactical lights, it’s light and has a lot of power!

The Warrior M20 uses the popular super bright Cree XP-G R5 LED which means it is very bright and energy efficient.

In terms of battery duration, I got around two hours at the brightest level of 275 lumens, before it would start to automatically lower the brightness. This is quite in line with what Olight announces, since they say that on the brightest level it is supposed to run for two and half hours. Now, I am going for 5 hours and she is still rocking on medium brightness (110 lumens) where it should remain for about two more hours before defaulting to the lowest brightness, 9 lumens, and still offering 150 hours of light!

The lowest setting is very useful for keeping a low profile, reading documents and for confined spaces, and the medium brightness is more than you would ever need for most occasions. With this setting you can get around 8-10 meters of light.

Now the medium brightness is the one I use most since it is very bright and doesn’t put much strain on the batteries. In this setting, the light can easily reach some 80 meters while at the brightest setting, on a clear night it can reach around 150-180 meters.

The Warrior also has a disorienting strobe mode at full intensity which certainly works well on persons as well as on animals such as dogs and cats.

The light spreads out evenly from the strong center beam and forms a broad circle of peripheral light, just as you can see on the following video. Unfortunately, the camera is unable to capture the real spread and reach of the light.

SETUP AND CONFIGURATION

You can put the Warrior on your belt with the thru-flap holster, put it around your neck using the included heavy-duty lanyard, put it in your pocket, or even attach it to your AEG using the Olight weapon mount.

The weapon mount is quite easy to install. You just slide it into any picatinny rail system and tighten the screws, being that the outside screws secure the mount to the gun and the inside screw tightens the Warrior to the mount. The mount is extremely well built and it’s a quality mount. My only complaint is that you need a tool to remove the flashlight from the mount. It should be easier and quicker to remove the Warrior from the mount and start using it as a regular flashlight.

Fortunately, Olight have recently launched a three key remote pressure switch to offer some of the missing features when using a remote switch, however I still would prefer to have these controls on the flashlight and leave the pressure switch nice and simple.

Thanks to its compact dimensions (140 mm [5.5 in] long with 33.5 mm [1.3 in]), it can be easily fitted unto most rifles and even on most SMGs. I’ve tried the Warrior on the APS ASR-107, which I will review shortly, and as you can see its looks great on this CQB rifle.

CONCLUSION

I am very much impressed with the overall quality of the M20 Warrior: the build quality is excellent and very rugged it seems as it can withstand anything. But the compact size, lightweight and energy efficiency features that I really enjoy since when I attach it to my AEG all these nice features are very helpful in the field and out of it.

The Warrior M20 is now my companion everywhere I go, because you never know when you might need an efficient and reliable flashlight!