I have had a Sofirn IF30 for a couple of weeks:
It's a good enough sized flood/spot and for the £78 I paid (lowest price I've seen it and that was before any prime day sales!), seemed excellent for 12,000 Lumens.
However I've had niggly issues from day 1:
- The wheel is a a bit hit/miss and the stepless adjustment is difficult to know where you are exactly and also sometimes won't change apparent brightness without quite a few degrees of movement.
- It gets hot, really hot really quickly and the 12,000 lumens drops after just a few seconds, which is normal for many torches but it's quite a sudden step down and so quickly (maybe 20 seconds) that it feels a bit too over advertised.
- The battery was so hot after an hour of use (mainly <50% power, with the odd full brightness for maybe 40 seconds at a time) that I honestly felt it was not good for the battery and fear for its longevity, the entire casing was quite warm!
So on returning it, I was looking at alternatives and for the size there isn't anything around £100 that looked suitable.. I did notice the Olight marauder mini pop up in the prime sale for £129 but for 7000 lumens I felt wasn't great value even at that price.. however, as some other items did in the prime sale they occasionally dropped down in price for a few hours, and Tuesday evening the Marauder mini dropped to £99.. so I thought it'd be worth a shot.. they only had green available for next day delivery, so opted for that..
Initial impressions are that despite similar sizing it feels more compact, the body is a nice grippy shape that fits nicely and feels that bit less generic.
I have other Olight torches that I bought for the Mrs (Baton S30R II and a Seeker 3) which share the same magnetic charger, so that's good, although I kind of like the flexibility of USB-C sockets, but Olight have been using this standard connection for long enough that you can get third party cables cheaply if spares are needed.
I charged it then took it out at 10:00PM last night with the late night dog walk and gave it a whirl, in terms of the IF30 niggles:
- for those 30-40 second bursts of full power, it doesn't really drop any brightness that I could tell.. I did leave it for 2 minutes before I noticed some obvious ramp down.
- It gets fairly warm/toasty but not uncomfortably hot, especially the battery, it was just warm after the hour of use.
- The controls are nice, the visual display of the 7 power levels (and battery level) make it a bit easier to know where you are with things, the control dial works better with the 7 steps rather than stepless controls for me, but it seemed to lag a bit every once in a while, so better but not perfect.
- I thought I'd miss the ability to have spot/flood on at the same time, which is where I think the heat issues arise on the IF30, but actually the spot is a proper spot, a perfect circle with a hard edge, and the flood is broad enough that it was OK.. if it had a 'both' mode that would be nice to try but if that is a source of battery management issues, I'll live without it
A niggle is that it doesn't have a moonlight mode.. something that I've occasionally used in winter walking the dog and I don't want to blind people who have stupidly come out at dusk with no torch and are struggling to see their dog, so not having a bright light walking towards them helps them out..
Basically it just feels better built and higher quality and seems to have a bit more consistency to it.. the RGB function is a gimmick for most, I don't need that for my usage.
I'm also glad I opted for a coloured chassis, it's actually nicer in person than the photo's suggest and definitely a nice alternative to the norm.
I can see me turning in to an Olight fanboy.. I only bought the Mrs Olight because it was a gift and ease of use/quality was worth the extra cost (always bought in sale periods though!) I then caved in a while back and bought an RN2000/BS100 pair of bike lights which have been amazing.. and I'm starting to nitpick on the cheaper but amazing VFM stuff I have.. I have found the torches I go back to are usually the slight better quality items, my Thrunite TC20 (pre-order with nice discount) just works so well and has been through hell and back.. I've had 2 or 3 other torches that are cheaper with better specs on paper, but they haven't lasted well if used a lot..
