From 1,000 feet above the ground, Outlemax looks pretty cool. Most people probably don’t need a flashlight that can smash cans, or coconuts, or set things on fire, but if you’re in the market for a searchlight (a type of high-powered light used in emergencies to light rooms or find people stranded in the woods) then these dramatic Instagram videos might be enough to convince you to buy an Outlemax.
And that’s the fact that Outlemax, to my knowledge, does not make or sell the flashlight in the ad I saw. In fact, it looks like they ripped off one made by Imalent which retails for a cool $670.
📷: Imalent MS18
When Outlemax arrived at my door, the first thing I noticed was that the product I held in my hand looked almost nothing like the one I’d seen in that enthralling Instagram ad. The on/off button placement was different, the reflector was flat instead of honeycomb-shaped, and the overall design just looked... off.
The Outlemax flashlight is bright enough to fill up a dark room. It’s bright enough to blind your neighbors. It’s bright enough to put in your bathroom and film some kind of arthouse thrasher with (it has a jarring strobe effect for funsies or for when your helicopter goes down and you need to signal for help).
Outlemax claims that its flashlight is 100,000 lumens, though there’s no real way to verify whether or not that’s true — there are phone apps for lumen measurement, but I don’t personally own a phone with a sensor strong enough to measure that type of brightness accurately. There’s also no granular description of how Outlemax’s lumen claim is arrived at or for how long one might expect to get that type of brightness.
I’m not overly surprised that Outlemax is 60 percent marketing scam. Their Instagram has about 700 followers and is populated with a grand total of six pictures and videos, the website looks like something I might’ve visited when dial-up was a thing, and I mean just check out this gem of an Instagram bio pictured here.