Grzybek Reviews

Wuben X3 Review | Your own pocket owl

Disclaimer: This flashlight was send to me by Wuben free-of-charge for review. I don’t earn any money from the sale of Wuben products.

Table of contents:

Price and versions

Wuben X3 is available in a couple of color versions and with either a charging base or a case.

Website link: Wuben Lightok X3 Owl (tracking link*)

Wuben gave me a -20% discount code: aff20

* – Tracking link disclaimer

I don’t earn money from the sale of Wuben’s products. The link has an “ref” at the end, so that Wuben can track sales and clicks coming from my review.

In the review I will showcase 2 versions of the X3:

  • Black with a charging base (left)
  • White with a case (right)

And a prototype version that was first sold on kickstarter (center)

Packaging and contents

The package contains:

  • The Wuben X3
  • A manual
  • Lanyard/USB C-C cable (2-in-1)
  • Charging base or case

Shape

X3 is composed of an aluminium head and a plastic body.

A key feature of the X3 is its rotating head, the light works in any position.

The machanism is smooth with a small click when fully rotated. The rotation lets us choose at what angle the flashlight shines at.

This makes it quite easy to set the flashlight up so that it lights up what we want.

The flashlight itself is quite compact and easy to operate in hand. It can be held in various ways.

The white version’s body glows in the dark.

Clip and lanyard

The X3 has a screwed-on clip. It’s a bit stiff. You can clip it into a pocket with one hand, but it’s important to get the edge of the pocket in-between the clip and the body, which makes it kind of difficult at times:

If I were to suggest how to improve the clip, then I think it would be something like this:

The flashlight will sit deeper in a pocket and the increased and lenghtened ramp at the end will make it easier to put in a pocket. Just my idea on how it could maybe be improved.


I found out that the X3 can work prety well attached onto a backpack or other piece of clothing, as you can angle the head so that it lights up the path infront of you.

We also get a lanyard. It can be used both with the flashlight or the case.

The lanyard has a USB C-C cable hidden inside. Build-in there’s also a USB-C to Lightning adapter (neat!). The lanyard has a 25cm ruler imprinted on itself.

Size

Lenght70mm
Width35mm
Hight20mm
Weight65g
Lenght40mm
Width46mm
Height87mm
Weight (w/o flashlight)126g
Weight (w/ flashlight)191g

Size comparison with other lights:

Convoy S2+ | Emisar D4K | Emisar D4V2 | Convoy T3 | Lumintop FWAA | Wuben X3 | Mushroom

Skilhunt H04RC | Convoy T3 | X3 Case | X3 | Opple Light Master | Wuben X0 | Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 | Muchroom

Wuben X1 | Wuben X2 | Wuben X3 | Wuben X0

Switch and UI

The X3 is operated with a switch located on the head. We also have a screen that shows the battery level, current mode and brightness:

The screen’s “glass” is made out of plastic. It’s quite a thin, because it seems to bend quite a bit under not a lot of pressure. With standart use I doubt this could cause a problem. Although out of curiosity, I pressed on the screen with my fingernail to check whether the flexibility of the plastic used could actually result in something undesirable.

Now, when viewed from a certain angle, there’s a small indentation visible in the “glass”. It doesn’t interfere with the flashlight’s usage, nor is it even visible when looking straight at the screen, but this makes me worried what might happen if someone was to accidently press on it a bit too hard, e.g. when putting the flashlight in the pocket or just doing what I did.

I think the screen’s “glass” should be made a bit thicker to prevent this from being possible.


UI explained in the manual:

What I like:

  • The UI is quite simple and intuitive.
  • Shortcut to turbo.
  • Build-in screen
  • Ability to turn off the blue AUX light.
  • No strobe mode in the main mode group.
  • Decent implementation of the red light operation.

What I would like to see changed:

  • Mode spacing. I find the change from 1lm to 50lm quite big, it would be nice to have another mode in-between them, about 10lm would work (together 4 modes + Turbo).
  • The 1lm mode is nice, but sometimes I miss an even dimmer sublumen mode, a true moonlight.
  • After stepping down the brightness from Turbo, the screen still shows the same lumen value. I’d like to see it update with the flashlight stepping down. It can just switch from 700lm to 200lm after a fixed amount of time, doesn’t need to be a smooth change.

Emitter and beam shape.

The X3 uses a Samsung LH351D for the white LED and a SST10 for the red emitter.

Opple Light Master measurments:

There is a bit of tint-shift visible in the beam.

Beamshape with/without the case diffusor.

Candela/lumen ratio explanation

A good way to determine the beam profile of a flashlight is to divide its candela (cd) by the lumens (lm) it produces. In return, we will get the cd/lm ratio. Here’s an approximate scale of what those values mean:

  • 0.1 cd/lm: light bulb
  • 1-3: flooder
  • 5-15: balanced EDC-style beam
  • 30: compact thrower
  • 100: dedicated thrower
  • 500+: extreme thrower
  • 10000: laser

The X3 has 3 cd/lm. The hotspot itself is a bit focused and transitions smooth into the spill. The spill is very wide, pretty much 180 degrees.

Beamshots

First set of slides showcases the X3’s brightness before and after Turbo stepdown, to give a good idea on how the sustained brightness look like in real life, compared to Turbo.

Comparison with other lights:

Wuben X0 vs Wuben X3:

Sofirn HS10 vs Wuben X3:

Convoy T3 vs Wuben X3:

Measurments and graphs

Here are the X3’s specifications given by the manufacturer:

Standard ANSI FL1

Standard ANSI FL1 describes how companies should measure flashlight specs. For lumen brightness, the measurment is supposed to be taken 30 seconds after turning the flashlight on. Runtime is measured by the time it takes the flashlight to reach 10% of the original output.

Learn more about the ANSI FL1 standard in this article.

ModeCandelaThrowEstimated range*
Turbo @ 0s1681cd82m27m-41m
Turbo @ 30s (ANSI)576cd48m16m-24m
* – Explanation

The throw/range of a flashlight is defined by the ANSI FL1 standard. It says that a flashlight’s range is how far it will light up a surface to 0.25lux, which is about as bright as full moon.
This most of the time isn’t bright enough to actually see what you’re shining on, so I added in an estimate to what you can expect the maximum range of the flashlight to be.

ModeBrightness (0s)30s10 min
Turbo552lm180lm170lm
High lv.3146lm144lm133lm
Medium lv.252lm52lm50lm
Low lv.1XXX
“X” – Too low to measure.

The Wuben X3 reaches 552lm and 82m throw, but only at turn-on, as it quickly steps down. Sadly at the 30 second mark, the flashlight has much lower output and throw than advertised.
This means that the X3 doesn’t follow the ANSI FL1 standard.


Runtime graphs:

The light starts to step down from Turbo about 2 seconds into the runtime and stabilizes at 180lm. Turbo doesn’t seem to be affected by cooling, stepdown is timed.


To check how well the driver handles low battery voltage, here’s a runtime graph of the Turbo mode with a full and empty battery:


Comparison runtime graph: Wuben X3 vs Wuben X0 vs Sofirn HS10

The Sofirn HS10 has quite a short runtime due to its small battery. I measured it at only 658mAh. Compared to the X0’s 1150mAh and X3’s 1000mAh.

Battery and charging

The X3 uses a build-in 1000mAh cell, most likely a Li-Po battery. It isn’t user replaceable.

The light can be recharged using the charging base or the case. Case lets us charge the light when we aren’t using it, but that comes at a cost of actually having to carry the not-very-tiny case so we can use it.

The case should be able to recharge the flashlight from 0% to 100% about twice.


The case can also charge your phone (when using a USB C-C cable).

Unlike the prototype version of the X3, this version uses pogo pins inside the case to charge the flashlight. That’s a welcome change, as wireless charging isn’t very efficient.


Comparison with the X3 Prototype version


Manual and warranty

Competition

As for right now, I don’t know of a flashlight with wireless charging or one that has a swivel head and red light together. The X3 is the first on the market regarding that, I think.

  • Nicron B74 – Tube-style light. 14500 Li-ion or AA/Ni-mh battery. Sustains 2x the brightness (420lm vs 170lm). Lower price. Hold for off. Subjectively worse clip. USB-C charging on cell. Slightly more focused beam (5cd/lm vs 3cd/lm.
  • Wuben L1 – Bigger size, weight and battery. Two channels (wide and focused). Sustains higher brightness. Higher price. Review soon!

I feel like small headlamps could also compete with the X3. Here are some:

  • Wuben H5 – Lower price. Lower max output. 14500 Li-ion or AA/Ni-mh battery. Sustains a similar brightness. Longer Turbo. Cell with build-in USB-C charging.
  • Sofirn HS10 – Lower price. Longer Turbo. Higher max brightness. Smaller cell -> shorter overall runtimes. Build-in USB-C charging.
  • Skilhunt H150 – Lower price. 1400 Li-ion or AA/Ni-mh battery. Magnetic charging. Longer Turbo. Sustains a slightly higher brightness.
  • And maybe Wuben X0, as an EDC light – not a headlamp. 18350 cell. Sustains a higher brightness for longer. Longer Turbo. Build-in USB-C charging under the switch.

Pros & Cons

+ Simple UI.
+ The screen is nice to have.
+ High CRI white light and a deep red secondary.
+ Rotating head, just like an owl.
+ Wireless charging, for people that use it.
+ It’s nice that you’re not limited to the case anymore, the charging base is quite compact.
+ Strong magnets.
+ The case has a build-in diffusor.
+ Compact size, fits in very small pockets.
+ Good build quality of pretty much everything that you get with the light (with the light itself).

+/- Sometimes I miss the lack of a sublumen moonlight mode.
+/- I’d like to see the screen update the displayed brightness when the flashlight steps down.

– Very fast stepdown on turbo (due to very low thermal capacity of the head). Even at 150lm, the head can heat up quite a bit after a couple of minutes.
– Low sustained output.
– Non-replacable cell.
– It’s sometimes difficult to clip the flashlight into the pocket.
– Screen’s plastic glass should be thicker, as to prevent it from bending when being pressed on.
– Specification doesn’t follow the ANSI FL1 standard.

Conclusion

Similar to other Wuben models, the X3 offers a lot of rarely seen features in a pretty looking design.
The small made it quite easy for me to take the light anywhere I went. The rotating head let’s us it in quite a few orientations and together with the the magnets we can nicely set it up to light up whatever we need.

Unfortunately, the Achilles heel of this flashlight (as well as lights with a head disconnected from the body in general) is how quickly it heats up and what brightness it can sustain.

However, considering its weak aspects, I still think it is quite a successful model. It’s overall enjoyable to use and as a flashlight enthusiast I like it, it’s fun.


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