Wuben X4 Review – Lots of Features for the Price

1. Pricing & Availability
2. What comes in the box?
3. Design & Construction
4. Size & Measurements
5. User Interface
6. Emitter & Beam
7. Mode Chart
8. Runtime
9. Driver & Regulation
10. Batteries & Charging
11. Switches
12. Carry & Ergonomics
13. Competition
14. Conclusion

Pricing & Availability

Wuben sent me this light in exchange for an honest review. Here is the official product page where you can see current pricing. That’s a tracked link so they know I sent you, but I’ve chosen not to earn any commission from sales generated by that link. At the time of writing, MSRP is $50 USD. That’s significantly less expensive than I expected it to be!

What comes in the box?

X4 comes in a lovely box. It’s a whole “unboxing experience”. Inside is:

• The light itself
• Battery (inside the light)
• User manual
• USB A-to-C charging cable
• Wrist lanyard

Design & Construction

X4’s design is pretty out there, like most Wuben models. It follows their chamfered brick design language and has plenty of cutouts and contours to accommodate the various switches and LEDs. I think it looks smart.

Build quality is good. They packed a lot of design complications into a small package at a fairly affordable price and managed to maintain a solid feeling of quality.

Size & Measurements

Olight i3E | Wuben E8 | Mini Maglite | Wuben X4 | Olight Warrior 3S

Measurement	Measured (mm)
Width (typical)	35.0
Thickness (typical)	20.0
Length	95.9
LED Footprint	1.5×2.0
Pocket Clip Screw Spacing	26.1
Included Battery Length	69.5
Weight with included battery (g)	141

User Interface

This UI is all over the place and feels a bit disorganized. I like the idea, but the implementation needs work.

How it works:

• Slider switch: This selects one of the four “channels” (lockout-side-front-moonlight).
• Tail button: In Front or Side channel, pressing the tail button will turn the front LEDs on Turbo until you release it. A quick double-press activated strobe, which stays on until you press the switch again to turn it off. In Moonlight channel, pressing the tail button turns on moonlight until you press the switch again to turn it off. It does nothing in Lockout channel.
• Side button: In every channel except lockout, the side button turns the light on/off at its last used brightness/color within that channel. In the side light channel, holding the side button will switch between white and color LEDs. When the light is off in the Front or Side channels, holding the side button turns on the battery indicator. In Moonlight channel, the side button just turns Moonlight mode on/off. Double-clicking in the front-light channel is a shortcut to Turbo. Double clicking in the side light channel does nothing if white is selected, but it makes the RGB LED blink if RGB is selected. The side button does nothing in Lockout channel.
• Knob: The knob does nothing in Moonlight or Lockout channels. In the Front and Side white light channels, it controls brightness. In the side channel with RGB selected, the knob controls color.

What they did right:

• Lockout is a channel on the channel selector. That’s way better than a long hold or four clicks.
• Knob for brightness/colors. That’s intuitive and cool.
• Turbo tail switch. Always nice to have.
• Single click on/off. That’s the basis of ang good flashlight UI.

How to fix it:

• Replace the Moonlight channel with an RGB channel on the slider switch. How did Moonlight end up on the channel selector instead of RGB in the first place?
• Reorder the channels. Make it lockout-rgb-side-front, so if you want front light quickly you can just push the slider all the way forward instead of having to count steps.
• Make the tailswitch consistent. It should work the same way in every channel except lockout. Press and hold for momentary Turbo.
• Make Strobe monentary-only, not constant on. Or remove it entirely.
• Add common shortcuts for the two white light channels. Hold the side button from off goes to the lowest brightness in that channel. Double click the side button from off goes to the highest brightness in that channel. Or make the knob a potentiometer that only turns so far, so you can turn the knob all the way up/down before you turn on the light.
• Put the battery indicator on the Lockout channel. If the light is locked out, pressing the side button should turn on the battery indicator for a moment. The battery indicator should also come on and turn red when the battery is critically low.

Emitter & Beam

I had never seen these LEDs before. Wuben told me they’re model “W2016SJ4”. Each diode is a 1520 size (1.5mm x 2.0mm) with a square LES offset to one side. They’re cool white, standard CRI, and do the job just fine.

The four front LEDs and complex optic looks fancy, but they all come on at the same time and produce a fairly normal, balanced beam. No flood/spot switching here. The only thing special about this beam is it sort of has two hotspots plus spill, rather than one hotspot and spill. I don’t understand why they didn’t just use two normal 3535 LEDs and a symmetrical optic. It’s worth noting there is no glass lens in front of the optic.

In the beamshots below, camera settings are fixed and the wall is 2.8M away.

In the beamshots below, camera settings are as similar as possible, the basketball goal to the right of the hotspot is 39M away, and the power pole in the center is 185M away.

X4 also has auxiliary side lighting; a bank of very floody, standard CRI, 4000K, white LEDs and one 7-color RGB LED. I’m disappointed the side white LEDs are a bit green (positive DUV) and aren’t high-CRI. That’s a missed opportunity. Ostensibly you can stick the light to a vertical metal surface and use it as a work light, but the tailcap magnet isn’t strong enough for that to be reliable. The RGB LED is a bit dim as well. Overall the side lighting is unimpressive.

Mode Chart

Disclaimer: All of my measurements are taken at turn-on. Lumen measurements were taken on a Texas Ace 3.5″ Lumen Tube. A candela measurement was taken at 10 meters with an Opple Light Master III on the highest brightness, and other candela figures were calculated relative to that. CRI, CCT, & DUV data were taken for each mode from a few feet away at the center of the hotspot with the Opple Light Master and Waveform DUV Calculator. Runtime tests were performed with the Ceilingbounce app on my smartphone. These tests were performed with a fully charged included battery unless otherwise specified. I cannot measure moonlight directly, so moonlight readings are calculated based on the brightness relative to the next-lowest mode. None of this is professional equipment, so take these measurements with a grain of salt.

The official specs are above, followed by my own measurements below.

Level	Lumens	Candela	Throw (Meters)	CRI (Ra)	Color Temp. (K)	DUV (Tint)
Front Max	1300	11500	214	62	5850	0.0106
Front Min	2	18	8	61	5750	0.0136
Side Max	70	45	13	68	3950	0.0061
Side Min	0.7	~0	~0	65	4050	0.0086

Runtime

Performance is fine. Turbo time on the front LED is quite short, and brightness starts dropping almost immediately. It settles at ~450lm after 60 seconds, which is less than I expected from a light with this much mass and cool white, standard CRI LEDs. Total runtime is good though, at ~3.5hrs. The side light isn’t impressively bright but it runs for over 10 hours at maximum brightness.

Thermal regulation: My Turbo and Turbo Cooled tests are virtually identical, so there’s no active thermal regulation here, just timed stepdowns. That means performance will be consistent, but not optimized for ambient temperature.

LVP (Low Voltage Protection) is present and works well. It doesn’t rely on the battery having a protection circuit. The light will shut off when the battery is practically empty, but it can be temporarily re-activated in an emergency. There’s no low-voltage warning.

Driver & Regulation

The driver: Wuben told me X4 uses a linear driver. That’s not as good as Buck or Boost, but it’s better than FET.

Regulation performance seems good/average. It maintains most of the Turbo brightness down to ~25% charge. That said, the only modes I can consistently measure are the max/Turbo brightness for the front and side LEDs, and that doesn’t give a complete picture of how well the light is regulated.

PWM: No PWM is visible to my eyes nor audible to my ears, but my Opple and phone camera can detect flickering at most brightness levels from both sets of white LEDs.

Parasitic Drain: I couldn’t get a reliable parasitic drain reading.

Batteries & Charging

The battery included is a user-swappable, button-topped, protected, 3400mAh, 18650 cell. That’s one of the things that drew me to this light, because most weird-shape lights like this have built in batteries that you can’t replace. Even Wuben ‘s own X1 required disassembly with a screwdriver to replace batteries. This one just has a battery door that pops open on the tail.

Charging is facilitated by a USB-C port under the channel slider. It’s revealed any time the Moonlight channel is selected, and Moonlight can be used while the light is charging. If you do that with the battery removed it works too, but the indicator LED flashes blue and red like a police car. There’s no powerbank function

It gets really hot when charging from empty, just barely cool enough to hold. I’m not super worried about it but it’s really weird.

The battery indicator is the RGB side LED. The table below shows what the LED means. I wish the charge indicator increments were an even 25%, rather than ranging from 10-50%.

State	Color/Pattern	Meaning
Plugged In	Blue Solid	Full
Plugged In	Red Solid	Charging
Unplugged	Blue Solid	>90% charge
Unplugged	Blue Blinking	40-90% charge
Unplugged	Red Solid	15-40% charge
Unplugged	Red Blinking	<15% charge

Switches

X4 has four switches/controls: a button on the side, a knob, a slider, and a button on the tail.

The slider on the side controls the channel. It has four positions: lockout, side light, front light, and moonlight. Dedicated multi-position switches like this are my favorite way to handle multiple channels. This one also doubles as a port cover for the charging port. It’s a bit loose and rattly but it works well and doesn’t move accidentally. It’s a bit odd that Moonlight is its own “channel” on the slider.

The knob and button on the side are the primary on/off and brightness control. I don’t like the position of the knob. It’s not very ergonomic and I almost always start turning it the wrong direction for what I want. I wish it were set up like a mouse scroll wheel sticking out the side of the light, then I could press on it to act like a button for on/off.

The tail switch is an instant front turbo/strobe button when you have the front or side channels selected. Holding does momentary Turbo. A double tap does momentary Strobe. When the moonlight channel is selected, the tail switch does momentary moonlight. When locked out, the tail switch does nothing.

Carry & Ergonomics

Ergonomics are fine. Holding the light and accessing most of the switches is plenty comfortable. Reaching the rotary knob is awkward though. Forward, reverse, and cigar grips work fine.

Magnet: There’s a magnet in the tailcap, but it is not strong enough. It can hold the light upside down just fine, but if you stick the light to a vertical surface, gravity and the off-center magnet makes the light pivot and point the side light sideways instead of down. That’s not very helpful if you’re trying to use it as a work light.

Competition

Here are some lights in the same class and how they compare.

Sofirn IF24 Pro: budget alternative

• similar price
• similar front brightness, more throw
• significantly more side brightness, and high CRI
• much more functional RGB modes
• somewhat similar 4-position channel selector and side switch
• no tailswitch, no brightness knob
• stronger magnetic tailcap
• closer to a traditional cylinder shape
• less-clean beam
• less visually and ergonomically interesting
• better pocket clip
• no battery indicator
• accepts standard 18650 batteries
• USB-C charging on board

Acebeam Terminator M2: bigger, throwier alternative

• significantly more expensive
• main beam + narrow throw beam
• more brightness, more throw, and high-CRI LEDs available
• similarly unimpressive RGB LEDs
• tailswitch and great flood/throw toggle switch
• accepts standard 18650 batteries
• no on-board charging on the light itself (though the included battery has a USB charging port)
• significantly wider and heavier
• has a battery indicator
• marginally better pocket clip

Skilhunt MiX-7 Gen2 Plus: More RGB Alternative

• traditional cylindrical flashlight shape
• single side switch
• accepts standard 18650 batteries
• proprietary magnetic charging system
• magnetic tailcap
• three white LEDs (high CRI available)
• discrete red, green, and blue LEDs (with color mixing available)
• UV LED with ZWB2 (visible light) filter
• somewhat complicated UI but it has lots of RGB modes and the RGB LEDs are very bright

This section is not comprehensive. If I didn’t include a particular light here, it doesn’t mean it’s bad or doesn’t deserve to be here. I simply cannot list every possible competitor.

Conclusion

I love the price, user-swappable battery, channel selector switch, and USB-C charging. I like the aesthetics and size. Build quality and performance are good. The knob, UI, and clip are fine but could use some improvement. All the side LED’s are unimpressive and don’t live up to the competition. I’m glad that Wuben is willing to push the boundaries and make wild lights like this X4 model, even if they aren’t perfect.

Thanks to Wuben for sending me this light for review!