Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel Gunmetal Flashlight Review

Just released is the Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel Gunmetal Grey Arkfeld, a new colorway of this popular flashlight! It still has the great laser, too! Read on!

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Official Specs and Features

Here’s a link to the Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel gunmetal flashlight product page via ShareASale.

Versions

There are a bunch of body color versions of the Olight Arkfeld flashlight. A cool white (as usual) and neutral white (as seen here) emitter option is available – both have green lasers. And four body colors: Black, OD Green, Desert Tan, Blue, Orange, Lime green, and this Pinwheel Gunmetal Grey. Also available are specialty models – copper and titanium.

Price

This Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel gunmetal flashlight sells for $71.99, or you can go for the kit for $5 more and get a nice bonus flashlight, too!

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Short Review

The Olight Arkfeld flashlight is a neat little light! I would say it’s basically an S2R Baton II with a built-in LiPO in a very friendly and anti-roll shape. The green laser is a nice bonus! I’m pleased that Olight is now offering neutral white emitters, and this one is very consistently in the claimed range.

Long Review

The Big Table

Olight Arkfeld (Checked)
Emitter:	Probably Osram P9 (Neutral White)
Price in USD at publication time:	$71.99
Cell:	Internal
Runtime Graphs
LVP?	Yes
Switch Type:	E-Switch
Quiescent Current (mA):	?
On-Board Charging?	Yes
Charge Port Type:	Proprietary Magnetic
Charge Graph
Power off Charge Port	All modes
Claimed Lumens (lm)	1000
Measured Lumens (at 30s)	870 (87% of claim)^
Candela per Lumen	3
Claimed Throw (m)	101
Candela (Calculated) in cd (at 30s)	125lux @ 5.106m = 3259cd
Throw (Calculated) (m)	114.2 (113.1% of claim)^
Claimed CCT	4000-5000
Measured CCT Range (K)	5000-5300 Kelvin
Item provided for review by:	Olight
All my Olight reviews!

^ Measurement disclaimer: Testing flashlights is my hobby. I use hobbyist-level equipment for testing, including some I made myself. Try not to get buried in the details of manufacturer specifications versus measurements recorded here; A certain amount of difference (say, 10 or 15%) is perfectly reasonable.

What’s Included

• Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel gunmetal flashlight
• Charging cable (Proprietary magnetic Olight MCC 0.5A/1A/2A version)
• Manual

Package and Manual

Here’s how you can tell if you have NW or CW – there’s a sticker on the side of the box!

The box still has the tear-off strip. 🙁

Build Quality and Disassembly

If you like Vapes, this is the Olight for you. The Olight Arkfeld has a very vapey feel… Or maybe that’s just my opinion. That doesn’t take away from the light, though – the Olight Arkfeld flashlight has a very robust feel. It’s solid.

Of course, there’s no cylindrical cell in there to rattle around or be removed, or whatever. The cell is 100% built-in. That’s good and bad, of course. Building the cell in means Olight can get reliable performance, but it also means you can’t change the cell when it wears out in a number of years.

Whatever the case may be about the battery (which is almost certainly a LiPO of some capacity), the build here is great. I love the very anti-roll shape. Not only that, but the Olight Arkfeld flashlight slips into the pocket where I normally carry an 18650 light in a much more comfortable way. It’s approximately the same width as my wallet, depending on how many hundreds I have in there at the given moment.

No disassembly on this one. I attempted that on another model, and it didn’t really go anywhere.

 

The pinwheel design is very neat! Probably done with a laswer, which means Olight can probably really do a ton of neat stuff with their laser setup. Maybe this is just the beginning!

Size and Comps

Weight: 3.07 oz (87 g)
Height: 0.59 in (15 mm)
Length: 4.33 in (110 mm)
Width: 0.98 in (25 mm)

If the flashlight will headstand, I’ll show it here (usually the third photo).  If the flashlight will tailstand, I’ll also show that (usually in the fourth photo).

Here’s the test light with the venerable Convoy S2+.  Mine’s a custom “baked” edition Nichia 219b triple.  A very nice 18650 light.

Also above is the light beside my custom engraved TorchLAB BOSS 35, an 18350 light.  I reviewed the aluminum version of that light in both 35 and 70 formats.

Retention and Carry

The clip is a screwed-in clip with plenty of clearance under the body.

This clip is surprisingly thin but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing. Tension is basically perfect, and placing the Olight Arkfeld flashlight on a pocket works so well.

The only other way to retain the Arkfeld is with the magnetic base. While mostly for charging, the magnet is strong enough to hold the light in place, too.

Power and Runtime

Olight states this as a “Built-in 1050mAh Lithium Polymer Battery” and that’s perfectly logical. I was unable to gain any access to the LiPO but did run a few output tests. There is a battery indicator below the switch and it indicated when the voltage is low. The light finally shuts off, too. Output is nice and flat, even there at the start at around 900 lumens. That’s 3 or 4 minutes at around 900 lumens…  While that’s below specification, I’d guess that Olight spec’d the Cool White version, and I’m testing the Neutral version.

There are a couple of photos below of the battery indicating feature.

Charging

There’s also onboard charging, by way of a magnetic charge base and a magnetic charge connector in the tail (both parts are magnetic!).  The charging base is the common Olight MCC, which can charge at 1A, 1.5A, or 2A.

Here are the photos of battery indicator. First, you can see red.

Next up is green:

Charging looks pretty good. The max rate is around 0.9A. I would guess the LiPO could handle way more, so I’d love to see this utilize the full capability of the 2A MCC charger.

Modes and Currents

Mode	Mode Claimed Output (lm)	Claimed Runtime	Measured Lumens	Tailcap Amps
Turbo	1000	4m+110m	870	–
High	300	126m+34m	260	–
Med	60	11h50m	47	–
Low	15	41h	13	–
Moon	1	8d	0.8	–

Pulse Width Modulation

Nothing really to mention here.  None of the modes seem to be using PWM.

Here you can see a “baseline” – a chart with almost no light hitting the sensor.

Then there’s the Ultrafire WF-602C flashlight, which has some of the worst PWM I’ve seen. It’s so bad that I used a post about it to explain PWM! Here are multiple timescales (10ms, 5ms, 2ms, 1ms, 0.5ms, 0.2ms) to make comparing this “worst” PWM light to the test light easier. That post also explains why I didn’t test the WF-602C at the usual 50us scale.

User Interface and Operation

There’s just one e-switch on the Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel gunmetal flashlight.  Surrounding that e-switch is a selector knob of sorts, which points to either white LED output or green laser output.

When you turn the light on, these indicator LEDs briefly indicate what the general charge state is.

The e-switch isn’t proud at all. The selector has two nubs that help flip between outputs. All of that said, the user interface is basically the same as the Olight S2R Baton II, which I’ve covered before.

Here’s a user interface table! This only applies when the selector is in the LED position. For laser output, the switch is simply on/off.

State	Action	Result
Off	Click	On (mode memory)^
On	Hold (release at desired mode)	Mode cycle (L, M, H) (no Moon or Turbo)
Off	Hold	Moonlight
Any	Double click	Turbo
Any	Triple click	Strobe
Strobe	Click	Off
Strobe	Hold	Previous Mode
Off	Long hold (past Moonlight)	Lockout (indicated by a single red line on the battery indicator)^
Lockout	Hold	Unlock to Moonlight
On	Click then Click and Hold (quickly)^^	Timer (Single blink: 3 minutes, Double blink: 9 minutes)
Timer	Click then Click and Hold (quickly)^^	Switch between 3- and 9-minute timers.

^ Moon, Low, Medium, and High are memorized.  Turbo is memorized as High.
^^ The manual states this as “Double click and hold” but I think “Click then Click and Hold” quickly.  Any form of double click ends in Turbo or Strobe.

LED and Beam

Olight doesn’t state what emitter is in the Arkfeld flashlight. I would guess it’s an Osram P9, but it doesn’t matter too much since we’ll see a characterization of the emitter below.

The emitter is in a small TIR, and beside that is a Laser output module. The laser is green.

Olight does state what the emitter CCT is though: 4000K-5000K.  Very great!

The output is very floody!

LED Color Report (CRI and CCT)

The CCT claim is 4000K to 5000K and this emitter hits that mark. I measure it between 4600K and 4900K. It’s very good and neutral! The CRI is low, at around 70. More disappointingly though, is that the Duv is well above the BBL, demonstrating that the output is a bit greenish.

Let’s not forget that Olight is answering the call to offering neutral white, though. I like it, and I appreciate it. Maybe when they run out of this batch of Osram P9’s we can talk about some Nichia 519a’s. 

Beamshots

These beamshots always have the following settings:  f8, ISO100, 0.3s shutter, and manual 5000K exposure. These photos are taken at floor level, and the beam hits the ceiling around 9 feet away.

Tint vs BLF-348 (KillzoneFlashlights.com 219b version) (affiliate link)

I keep the test flashlight on the left and the BLF-348 reference flashlight on the right.

I compare everything to the KillzoneFlashlights.com 219b BLF-348 because it’s inexpensive and has the best tint!

Conclusion

Go buy the Olight Arkfeld Pinwheel gunmetal flashlight!

What I like

• Interesting shape!
• Good output
• Meets throw specifications
• The laser option is neat (and also easy to avoid)
• User interface will be very familiar to anyone with a Baton
• Slips into “the 18650 spot” in a pocket with more comfort than an 18650 light
• Neutral white option

What I don’t like

• Very floody
• Low CRI
• Non-replaceable battery
• Proprietary charging (seriously, USB-C would be fantastic!)

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Notes

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