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Olight ArkPro Ultra Flashlight
Pros & Cons
- Very, very durable custom aluminum design with a stylish flat shape under 5 inches
- Bulbs for a spotlight, floodlight, UV light and laser pointer, reaching up to 1,700 lumens on highest settings
- Multiple brightness settings and control options
- Handy moonlight mode to avoid blinding people at night
- Useful dial-based control doubles as user-friendly indicators for battery level and brightness
- Multiple charging methods, including an easy snap-on magnetic charger that can plug into a power bank
- Performed well in basically all of my tests
- So many different modes will take time to learn and can be confusing at first, with some possible user manual errors
- At higher settings the flashlight can scorch materials and potential be a fire hazard
Say goodbye to the old, hefty flashlight of the past with its big batteries and awkward handling. I spent weeks testing the high-tech replacement from Olight. It fits in a pocket, survives on the trails, helps at home and is incredibly bright for its size. Now I never want to go back to old lights.
The ArkPro Ultra ($130) offers basic spotlight and floodlight modes, but it can boost them up to 1,700 lumens, then adds massive extras like a UV light for spotting stains, a laser pointer for presentations/cat toys, a moonlight mode for camping and more. Add the magnetic charging option and the superdurable aluminum frame, and this is the flashlight to beat. The only challenge is mastering the many modes this model has.
Here’s what I learned about the best flashlight I’ve ever tested and how you can use it, too.
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This flat flashlight design truly impresses
Olight’s most advanced flashlight may fit easily in your hand or pocket (it’s not quite 5 inches long), but it’s weight and strong, using a patented “O-aluminum” which Olight says is 1.73x as hard as standard 6061 aluminum alloy. There’s a built-in clip in the back to hook it on a pocket, belt or backpack strap as needed. I dropped the flashlight from over six feet onto sharp lava rock several times, and only found barely visible scuffs afterward. The IPX7 waterproof rating also helps it resist rain and splashes: It didn’t rain when I was testing, so I tossed the flashlight out on the lawn and ran the sprinklers for a while, which didn’t affect performance at all.
This flashlight offers a covered USB-C port for charging and a magnetic charging circle at its opposite end with a USB-A magnetic charger you can attach to a laptop, power bank or other device. The magnet end of the light is strong enough to suspend it from metal surfaces, too, like a refrigerator wall or car hood (I tried both with no issues).
Charging worked fast, I’m just not sure how fast. One of the only things I didn’t like about the ArkPro Ultra was the lack of indicators about when the flashlight actually finished charging. A small light on the magnetic charger shines when it’s plugged into a power source, but stops glowing when it’s connected to the flashlight, which seems counterintuitive. Olight says charging completes in about 1.5 hours, which seems about right.
The “dial” on the front of the light features most of the controls, with a side button for the laser pointer. It offers subtle but effective — and pretty — light indicators for battery power and the brightness of the mode you’re using. The 2,000-mAh battery lasted well past all my testing, but it’s limited to about 2 hours on brighter settings. And wow, there are a lot of settings.
A lighting mode for every occasion
All of the ArkPro Ultra’s controls are housed in its dial and primary button. You can flick the dial to switch between floodlight, spotlight and UV modes.
A series of long and short presses can switch between additional settings, which are so numerous I’m going to put them in a list here:
- High, medium and low settings for the primary lights, activated by long pressing the button when the lights are on.
- A turbo setting for extra-bright primary lights with a double press, and it is extremely bright, especially in the dark. This is where the 1,700-lumen limit is reached, but you’ll only want to use this setting for brief periods.
- A moonlight setting with a long press while off, which was one of my favorites, an extra-low light mode ideal for finding your way at night without blinding you or anyone else.
- A strobe setting for emergencies with a triple-press.
- A lockout setting to help prevent unwanted activation.
- The little ArkBeat logo light, which moves through the rainbow over time. This mode has limited usefulness since the battery indicator light is easier to use.
- A side button for the green laser pointer, which can be used in combination with any of the other lights.
Olight provides a chart of all the different combinations for the flashlight, but there’s certainly a learning curve when first starting. Not many flashlights take study to use, and the results are sometimes confusing. For example, Certain Olight sources say the ArkBeat on the ArkPro Ultra can be set to a single color or used as an auto-off function, but neither ability was present in my model.
More clarification for new users would be welcome. I’ve reached out to Olight to ask about this feature in the manual and if it survived into the final product, so I’ll update when I hear back from them.
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Experiments in the field
As I practiced with the ArkPro Ultra, the controls grew easier to use. I used it frequently outdoors and at night while hiking, but photos don’t easily show the difference in those conditions. Instead, here’s a look at the different modes on a wall, where you can easily see the floodlight versus spotlight versions. Turbo mode is significantly brighter, too. The high spotlight setting registered around 1,500 lux on my lux meter from about a foot away, an excellent reading for brightness.
Moonlight mode’s soft glow is rated at only about 1 lumen, and you can also see the classic green laser mode.
What about that UV light? Nothing works like some real-world tests. One of its uses is to pick up pet stains that might otherwise go unnoticed. Sure enough, after cleaning up a hairball, the light helped spot an invisible bit that wasn’t quite clean enough.
The UV mode helped a surprising amount on my stovetop, too. While the black induction surface looked clean after a basic wipe-down, the UV light immediately revealed stains that needed extra attention.
However, a couple of words of caution after all my testing. First, the laser pointer comes with all the dangers of lasers, so don’t point it at anyone’s face and be warned that it could damage some kinds of imaging hardware.
Second, at higher settings, the flashlight can get hot. I set it on a higher-level floodlight version to test the battery life and absently put it against the cardboard box the model came in. Within a minute, the box had started to smoke, burned by the bright light. This could be extra-dangerous if you accidentally leave the light on and put the ArkPro Ultra back in your pocket, or if the flashlight gets dropped and left in a bed of dry leaves. When that much power is packed into a small device, it needs care during operating.
Final thoughts on the ArkPro Ultra
Where can’t you use this pocket-sized, multitool flashlight? The ArkPro Ultra is an adept Swiss army knife for lighting. I tried it when cleaning, in the kitchen, magnetically attached to my car hood during maintenance, on the trails at night and more. Switching to the laser mode or quiet moonlight mode offers even more potential, and the extra-durable design shrugged off a beating with ease.
The flashlight isn’t entirely perfect. The many modes and how to enable them can be confusing when first learning to use the flashlight. Without an apparent auto-off mode, on higher settings, the light can easily scorch nearby objects, which could melt clothes, burn skin or cause wildfires when used incorrectly.
Otherwise, it’s a powerful light at home almost anywhere, with more power than lights many times its size and a design far more useful than the traditional flashlight. It’s not every day you see so much innovation in such a well-worn field.
