Milwaukee recently came out with the M18 Radius Compact Site Light. It’s a new cordless light that puts out whopping 4,400 lumens and has the ability to blast light in a full 360 degrees and even light above the unit. I was able to get my hands on one thanks to Milwaukee and tested it out and compared it’s light output with some of the other lights I had on hand to see what this bad boy is all about.
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For this review I left it in the capable hands of the Tool Craze studios which works on video reviews and the video can be seen below thanks to YouTube so you can see what I had to say about this new Milwaukee M18 Radius Compact Site Light.
What I thought about it:
One thing’s for sure, and that is that this light is bright! If you need to light up a whole room and I’m talking about the entire room including all 4 surrounding walls and the ceiling, this M18 Radius light delivers just that. This is possible by an array of LED’s on the light that surround the light all the way around and include another set of LED’s on top of the light to shine upwards for a full blanket of light.
The light that comes out of this is very bright – much brighter than my other brightest Milwaukee M18 lantern light, which makes sense since the lantern only has 800 total lumens.
I took the lights out to my small backyard at night as a good test for this light. Compared to the M18 lantern, the M18 Radius was night and day. The lantern did a decent job of lighting up surrounding walls but the M18 Radius proved it’s worth with over 4 times more lumens and easily shined the nearby walls. So really this comparison was apples and oranges, so a better comparison was with my brightest light I had which was the Ryobi 18V LED work light with 1700+ lumens. Interestingly enough, the Ryobi light was a bit brighter than the M18 Radius light, but as I found out, that’s because the Ryobi focuses all of it’s light output in one direction while the M18 Radius light on the other hand blast all of it’s light in all directions including above the light. So in reality you’re getting more total light out of the M18 Radius because you get light in front, behind, side to side, and above the light, while you only get light output directly in front of the Ryobi. They’re essentially both great lights with completely different purposes with the Ryobi being an excellent fixed beam area light, while the Milwaukee M18 Radius is an excellent light for lighting up a surrounding large area.
The light quality is very clean and uniform on the Milwaukee M18 Radius light. There were no hot spots or dim spots, just plain even lighting. Also it’s light quality was great as it has a warm tone to it like what you would expect from a traditional light bulb. This is interesting because most LED’s give off a very pale white light that is often has cool tones and many times dips into the slight blues. This wasn’t evident on the Milwaukee M18 Radius or the M18 lantern because Milwaukee tweaks their LED products to have more natural looking light output. For comparison’s sake, the Ryobi 18V LED work light which has good lighting quality, is pale in comparison to the Milwaukee M18 Radius light output. Side by side as you can see in the video, the Ryobi light appears very pale white with a slight blueish tint to it, it’s really not that bad but is easily seen when compared to the M18 Radius light.
I didn’t go over any runtime tests on the M18 Radius light, but Milwaukee claims you can get a full work day of light, up to 8 hours with an M18 XC 5.0 battery when set to the lowest setting (1000 lumens). With the same battery you can also expect to get 4 hours of runtime on medium (2100 lumens) and up to 2 hours of runtime on its highest brightness setting (4400 lumens). And Milwaukee added an AC input so you can plug in an extension cord to get unlimited runtime. They also added an AC out so you can plug in other tools into the light when plugged into an outlet, or you can plug in more M18 Radius lights and string them altogether to cover more ground.
Milwaukee also added a neat feature that disables half the light so only one side is lit. This is perfect for when you need the Radius light to only light up one area instead of the whole room. As an added benefit you also save battery juice because half the lights are turned off.
So everything about the light sounds great right? Although I couldn’t really find any negatives, I was expecting to be blinded by 4,400 lumens of light when I first unboxed the light. But as I quickly set it up, I noticed that even in it’s highest brightness, the light wasn’t blinding. I have a hard time looking in the direction of the light that comes out of my Ryobi 18V LED light because it’s so bright, but that wasn’t the case on the M18 Radius. But the fact is, that this isn’t a bad thing at all as nobody likes being blinded by a light. This is also due to the fact that all of the light output that comes out of the M18 radius light is spread out evenly surrounding and above the light. So you are getting more total light output on the Milwaukee M18 Radius light than on the Ryobi 18V LED light. I could only imagine how badly one would be blinded if all of the M18 Radius’s light output was aimed in one direction. May God have mercy on us!
Even though the light is called a compact site light, I found it to be on the larger side for a cordless product. It has a bit of weight to it and luckily Milwaukee added a large oversized carry handle on top for easy one handed carrying. And they also added a slick metal hook on the bottom of the unit so that you can mount the light overhead that it’s out of the way and provides a full range of light just like an overhead light fixture does. The hook has been designed to fit over pipes and has a neat design that makes it self centering on pipes so that the light is not lopsided when it’s hanging, and the hook is also designed to hang over the full width of a 2×4.
The light itself is sold as a baretool only meaning no battery or charger are included and with a price tag of $299. This is definitely not an inexpensive light, that’s for sure. But luckily Milwaukee has your back covered and includes a security cable so you can strap down your light on the job to reduce the risk of theft.
Overall, I found this light to be well designed, lots of great features such as the AC input for unlimited runtime when needed and AC output to string other lights together or plug in other tools. I like the ideas built into the light such as the hook for overhead mounting, and the ability to turn off one side of the light to focus light in only one direction when full surrounding light is not needed. And it’s bright enough to light up a large area with good visibility and the light quality is very natural.
Specifications
- 4400 Max lumens
- High/Medium/Low setting
- 1000 / 2100 / 4400 Lumens
- 8 hour runtime on low using M18 XC 5.0
- 4 hour runtime on medium using M18 XC 5.0
- 2 hour runtime on high setting using M18 XC 5.0
- Milwaukee TrueView High Definition Lighting
- 180 & 360 Degree electronic light control
- High Impact Polycorbonate Lens
- Large oversized carry handle
- Built in self centering hook for overhead coverage
- Hook designed for studs and pipes
- Up to 8 hours runtime on Low w/ XC 5.0
- Cordless or Corded power M18 or AC input
- AC Input & Out – string multiple lights together
- 5 year Tool Warranty
- Limited lifetime warranty on LED’s
- Pricing $299 bare tool
DISCLOSURE:
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