Viridian X5l Gen 3 Tactical Light with Camera - Weapon Light, Laser and Camera

When it comes to self-defense and using a gun, there’s a lot to think about. It’s in your best interest to always be able to properly identify your target and, if needed and hit it as well but also have something to support your need for using a gun to defend yourself.

Now, this is the newest thing having a gun laser light and a video camera. Viridian did just that with the X5L with cam, check it out.

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In today’s environment it’s almost critical, guys, that you have your own video record of an encounter when a gun is drawn and or used, you know, not only for your legal benefit but also the impact that it has on your thought process and accountability. Knowing that I’ve got a video record of what I’m doing, you know, I think instills a little bit of extra pause and caution which should be there but it’s nice having that little extra nudge to you, you know, hey, what’s gonna happen here when I pull the trigger. Now, for law enforcement, this is absolutely critical, you know, you watch the news.

The vast cams

The vast cams, the problem with the vast cams is the view is often blocked when the gun is put out in front and then you have a rifle and all you see is the back of the rifle and unfortunately that doesn’t provides us what we need and then we got blurry video from people standing around. Anyway, that’s the idea behind doing weapons mounted cameras. Now, before we get into the review, let’s just take a quick look at the specs and tech and run through some of the features on this.

Viridian X5l Gen 3 Specs and Features

• X5L with Cam
• Full HD Video and Mic
• 5mW Green Laser
• 500 Lumen LED Light
• INSTANT-ON w\ their holster
• USB port for recharging and files
• 2-yearlimited warranty
• 1.5” H, 2.75” L
• 3 oz. Weight

Laser, Battery, Light and Cam

I just want to run through a couple features here real quick. We’ve got the power-on on this side and we have the power-on on this side and then we have two little LED lights here and here, one is for the battery. I can lightly depress and it’s just an instant on-off only as long as I’m lightly touching it. Now, that’s a red light that’s showing that my battery is down and needs recharging.

If I want to turn the unit on I click it and now it’s on. If I want to cycle through all the different settings I simply click them both at the same time once. Oops, I turned it off! I’ll turn it this way. Ok, now I’m pressing both at the same time. That’s the flashing laser, press it again, and that just allows me to cycle through all the different settings. Let’s find one that I want, ok, you can’t see, but the laser is on there. I have the battery light indicator there. The camera is not working. That’s this light. If I press this twice, press, let go, press, let go, nope, didn’t do it right. There we go! It waits two seconds. That is flashing, that’s telling me the cam is activated and it is recording. When I turn it off so now that I have the cam enabled every time, even just the light depression, two seconds, there we go, cam is going. It would seem if I light depress it, the cam will come on but then light depressing it again, the cam’s gonna keep running so I have to turn it on and then off. I’m just flip up this cover here, I’ll show you, I’m gonna plug it in and we’re gonna recharge that. We’ll see if I can get it halfway charged. That light will turn yellow when it’s about halfway and when it’s fully charged that’ll be green and if I activate the cam. If I want to deactivate the cam, ok, I turned it on, same thing, I’m gonna press this twice and now I have deactivated the cam and when I turn it on and off the cam is not gonna come on. So, I got it plugged in, it’s showing me the red light, showing the yellow light over there. We’ll just wait until that turns green and then it’s fully charged. There it’s showing full charged, we got the green light, good to go.

got the X5L with the cam mounted on my Springfield XDM and I went with the full size. It’s gonna be really hard to get this on anything other than a full size and even with a full size, I’ll admit, it’s a bit on the big side. It even extends just a little bit above the rail. What I would like to see is maybe somehow this moved back a little bit so that we could get it on there with, I guess, more or less rail space, if that makes sense. Anyway, what I wanna do here is to run through in the dark some of the different settings so you can see what it’s like in complete darkness and then we’re gonna go outside and put some lead on steel.

It’s important to mention that this does not play with those of you that have Mac-Apple. When we plugged this is, it’s not compatible. You need a PC. That’s something that I would like to see changed. The files are an MOV and what you need on a MAC is iMovie or mp4. You can’t convert, it’s a huge pain in the ass. So, what I did was I was just did the video and then I had my phone to do the sound because I was just, I was not having the best of luck with converting the files. I also found it challenging to cycle between the different brightness settings on the light. You have to press this and hold it for three seconds and it’s supposed to cycle through. Sometimes I got it to work sometimes I didn’t. I want to reach out to Viridian, make sure that it’s not user error. What I wanna do is I wanna show you what this looks like inside so I’m down in my basement and I’m gonna turn this on maybe run through some of the different , you know, laser light, just laser, just lights. You can see how bright it is indoors and then we’re gonna go outside and I’m gonna shoot some steel at night so you can see, you know, just how far I can see and identify something. Let’s check that out.

Light and Laser testing at night time

It’s pretty much completely black in here, I can’t see anything, I’m gonna turn on the light and the cam. One push to the button and this is in strobe mode and for self-defense I would highly recommend strobe mode it’s bright enough that we can easily target identification and see what we need to see but want to run through the different settings, like I showed you, we’re just gonna push them both at the same time. Now we have just a green laser. Now we have the light with the pulsating laser, just the light, It’s off, laser solid, laser solid with light, solid and now we’re back to strobe mode.

Ok, so this is 50 yards, are actually a little bit under. I started walking towards the target, can see the target perfectly, pretty good. There you go, guys.

Ok, that worked great. What I wanna do now is daylight. Back here my CQB. I’m gonna use just laser, do a little transitioning and see how that …

Daylight testing

I wanna see, actually, I wanna show you how well we can see it in daylight and transition. I’m not gonna use, I’ve got an awesome Hollow Sun on here. Nice thing here is that you can use that if that’s zeroed you can dial in a laser super easy so it’s awesome. Anyway, let’s see how we can do without looking down the sights using just the laser. Nice! Alright, let’s get this baby off and torture test it. There you go, guys, that worked great. Now, what we’re gonna take this off and I’m gonna torture test, I’m gonna drop it 17 feet, I’m gonna submerge it and I’m gonna freeze it and then we’re gonna put it back on. Hopefully it’s still working and then we’re gonna drill some steel and make sure it stayed on target.

Condensation and torture testing

This is the second one that I had. I got some condensation in there and originally on the first one I thought it had leaked. In fact, since then it’s cleared up and I just shot some video and it works perfectly. I just talked to Viridian because these are built in house, currently they don’t have the ability to like nitrogen purge these and so with the hot tub and the 102 temp in there it causes some condensation to build up. Anyway, it did clear up and I’m gonna put that back on the pistol and show you the video.

I just, out of curiosity, because I have found with two different models that this is a watertight, ok, I did have the issue with the condensation putting it in the hot tub. I don’t think too many people are gonna submerge their pistol or their X5L cam in the hot tub for 30 minutes so one question that pops to mind is, you know, the hot tub was 202 degrees, you know, am I gonna have any kind of condensation if it’s 102 degrees out so I thought, hey, you know, my oven has got a warm, keep warm mode and I thought that was 12o but I do think it goes up to 180. Let see if we’re getting any condensation with just straight normal heat and not submerged, two, two and a half feet and a hot tub. All right, well, it’s good and hot, I can tell you that much. We’re gonna set it down here, I’ll let it cool off and then we’ll see if we have any condensation. Ok, so this baby got hot, ok, conditions in which we would experience outdoors not being submerged in a hot tub and we have absolutely no issues with condensation so at least, for me, my conclusion is unless you plan on taking this into a hot tub you’re not gonna having any of the issues with condensation and I, just because I love this Hollow Sun and that’s still working too. So, hey, we tested both of these under some pretty extreme heat gets up to 180 degrees in there and let me tell you, when I took this out I could not touch any metal parts on this without burning my hand. That’s a win in my book.

We torture tested it, we put it in my hot tub, we ran into a few issues there. It is watertight but the extreme heat of that hot tub and because this is made here, you know, in house, it isn’t nitrogen perch and we had a few issues with the condensation that built up but then it also went away. Anyway, it passed the drop test, the freeze test, I got it mounted right back on, just like I had it. I’m gonna fire off some shots here and see if it is still working, see how the video is and see if it stayed on target.

So, as you can see I’ve got the green laser and actually the cam is rolling. I’m not gonna use the optic, I’m just kind of hold it out in front and make sure we can check and see the green laser working.

There you have it, It is what it is. You decide what you think.