I love me a good flashlight. Being daytime creatures, our low-light vision leaves a lot to be desired, and as nighttime falls on a regular basis, having a light on you statistically makes a lot of sense. Most of the time, a small, pocket light can do the job, and that’s exactly what I have on me. Sometimes though, you need to punch the darkness back in a way a single-cell light just can’t, and this is where the Marauder really shines. With a maximum output of a staggering 12,000 lumens, delivered in a concentrated beam with generous spill, this is truly a very serious light.
Construction is solid. The light is done entirely in metal, save for the conveniently illuminated power button on the side, so there’s quite a bit of gravity to it. Fortunately, the large circumference of the body, along with deep, rounded grooves on the body, greatly decrease the chances of accidentally dropping the light when in use. Should you have smaller hands, or are in a situation that warrants additional security, a handy lanyard loop along the length of the light’s barrel can be deployed, allowing you to securely tether the light to your hand. Along with the light, the package comes with the lanyard, a belt pouch, a charging cable, and wall charger—everything you need to punch the darkness in the face.
To put out this much light, the Marauder uses rechargeable, non-user-removable li-ion batteries. Once the light runs low on power, a quick twist of the endcap reveals a USB-C port, which connects to the included cable and wall charger. Plug it in, wait about an hour for the power button to stop glowing red, and you’re all set. Just be sure to close the port up again afterwards, to keep the light water resistant.
The business end of the light has three banks of four LEDs, with a smooth reflector cone on each one. This gives you loads of light, plenty of throw, and an extremely bright hotspot, with copious amounts of spill. While it’s not a floodlight, the sheer power available lights the spill area enough to do detailed work with, easily several meters away.
While I didn’t have a chance to go on a hike in the time I had the light, our area provides a lot of opportunities to give the Marauder a thorough test.
The areas surrounding our building in BGC get quite dark in the evenings when we take our dog for a walk, so having a massive light such as this was the perfect excuse to head to the areas we would normally steer away from. Once we were away from the street lights, a quick double-tap on the power button brought the light to life straight into turbo mode. Once live, another double tap fires up super turbo mode, and the full 12,000 lumens available on tap. In this mode, there was more than enough light to cut across two blocks, bringing everything in the beam into blinding levels of illumination.
The flashlight is rated to throw a beam up to 380 meters, and by our estimate, if it doesn’t actually hit that distance, it certainly comes close. At maximum output, with one block between myself and a target building, the Marauder gave enough light for me to cleanly identify shirts hanging on a line about ten floors up.
While max power is a something the Marauder has in spades, that’s not all there is to like about it. The interface is dead simple to learn and use. A single button is all it has, and all it needs. Press to switch on, hold to cycle through modes going from 10, to 500, 1,000, 3,000, 7,000, and 12,000 lumens, and combinations of taps bring it from off to full power in no time at all. It even has a sensor in the emitter head to drop the output should something be dangerously close to the front of the light.
As can be expected from something with such high output, heat is an issue. There is a three-minute limit at maximum output, at which point it will step down to a safe level while it cools down. Once temperatures have dropped, you can once again bring it up to maximum brightness for another three minutes. Efforts have been made to dissipate heat quickly, and the large cooling fins on the marauder do a decent job at keeping temps low. You could probably burn yourself with this light, but only if you actually tried.
The question now is, who could use such a light? It’s easily the brightest light I have ever used, with a size and weight to match. Unless you routinely carry a bag with you, it isn’t the easiest light to carry around, and there’s way too much light for use in a daily use scenario. Aside from just wanting 12,000 lumens in the palm of your hand, this light would be extremely useful at a farm, or perhaps with some form of emergency service when a lot of light is needed for a large area. It’s still very handy for the amount of light it can give, and has an impossible 30-day runtime on 10 lumens. If you can bear the 665-gram weight and the roughly soda-can sized body, the Marauder X7R is like having the sun in your pocket.
Also published in Gadgets Magazine October 2017 issue
Words by Ren Alcantara