I swear browsing AliExpress and taobao is bad for my finances.
Anyway, new light! This time it’s from a brand called On The Road, which I couldn’t really find much information about. Apparently this particular model (and others in it’s series) is the 5th generation, with all-new emitter choices.
Seeing that this is a 5-emitter light which is quite unique, taking the plunge, I chose the one with M35-F4 chips at 6500k, with a claimed output of 6800(!) lumens on turbo, **and** paired with a constant current driver on top. If you’re curious about other specs, do check out the included spec sheet.
In person, I’m surprised at how small the light actually is considering it packs this much power. The gunmetal gray anodization is of the matte variety and looks very pleasing to my eye. This light is one of the slimmest multi-emitter 21700 lights I have and still manages to pack USB-C charging and a pretty strong magnet in the tail too.
While I don’t have any measuring equipment, visually this light really does seem to be the brightest out of my multi-emitter lights on turbo. On the CCT and tint, while color temp is pretty blue, it doesn’t seem to have any green tint at all when compared with the Nichia 519As in the TS26S. If you’re looking for higher CRI, they do offer a 4700k R9080 version but I can’t find any information on what emitter this is using.
One area where I was curious about is how the beam pattern would look like. The Lumintop Apollo V2 uses a similar shallow orange peel for it’s 4 emitters, and that produces a pretty funky beam that is akin to projecting a flower on the wall. But this light somehow manages to produce a pretty clean beam with only a slight hint of a square boundary line in the spill area (likely from the center emitter)
In terms of performance, I’m pretty amazed that it holds the highest ramp (non-turbo) for almost 10 minutes without any apparent stepdowns in brightness while remaining just slightly warm to the touch. Again I don’t have measuring equipment, so do take this with a grain of salt.
Downsides? The UI is a click to turn on, click to change brightness and hold to turn off. Whether this would be considered a downside is personal preference I guess, but it does take some getting used to if you’re rotating it with other lights.
I think that’s about it from my initial observations, there’s a smaller brother of this light on the way called the X4M, which I’ll also do a first impressions of when it reaches my doorstep.
by Altercode_F
