Both Reach 1,600 Metres — Only One Lets You See: Terminator M1 vs X25 (UAE 2026)

The 30-second verdict

Two of the longest-reaching torches we stock claim almost the same headline number. The Acebeam Terminator M1 reaches 1,600 metres. The Acebeam X25 reaches 1,553 metres. Forty-seven metres apart on paper.

In the desert they behave nothing alike, and the spec sheet tells you exactly why if you read past the metres:

• Terminator M1 — 640,000 candela from 700 lumens. A laser-tight dot. AED 1,499, 304.6 g.
• Acebeam X25 — 602,952 candela from 23,000 lumens. A wall of light that happens to reach just as far. AED 1,239, 1,073 g.

Near-identical candela, near-identical reach, 33× the total light. That gap is the whole story. Buy the M1 if you need to identify one thing very far away. Buy the X25 if you need to actually see the ground between here and there.

And the catch that applies to both: neither turbo mode lasts. The X25 holds 23,000 lumens for one minute. The M1 holds its 700-lumen LEP turbo for 110 seconds. Plan around the step-down, not the headline.

Why two very different torches land on the same distance

Beam distance is not a measure of brightness. It is calculated from candela — how tightly the light is concentrated — using the point at which the beam has faded to roughly moonlight on the ground. Two torches with similar candela will quote similar metres, no matter how many lumens they produce. We wrote the long version of this in Lumens vs Candela vs Beam Distance, and the practical version in Flood or Throw?.

The M1 and X25 are the cleanest real-world proof of that principle we have on the shelf:

Read that table twice. The lighter, smaller torch is the more expensive one, and it produces 3% of the lumens. That is not a mistake in the pricing — LEP modules cost more than LEDs. It is a mistake only if you buy it for the wrong job.

What LEP actually is

LEP stands for Laser Excited Phosphor. A blue laser diode is fired at a phosphor plate, which converts it into white light. Because the emitting surface is tiny, the reflector can collimate it into a far tighter beam than any LED of the same size. The result is a hot spot roughly the width of a car at 500 metres, with almost no spill around it.

That is the trade. You get reach that a 300-gram torch has no business having, and in exchange you get almost no useful light anywhere except where you are pointing.

The M1 hedges this by putting a conventional LED head alongside the LEP head — 3,500 lumens of flood, at a modest 231 metres. So it is genuinely two torches in one body. Our full standalone test is in the Terminator M1 review.

Terminator M1 — LEP head, focused

Note the honest middle of that table: 250 lumens still reaches 990 metres for two and a half hours. That is the mode you will actually live in. Turbo is for confirming something, not for using.

Terminator M1 — LEP head, defocused

Widening the beam does not give you a floodlight — it gives you 177 metres and under 400 lumens. If you want flood from the M1, use the LED head instead.

Terminator M1 — LED head

A few cells in Acebeam’s published mid-mode data are inconsistent, so we have left them blank rather than print a number we cannot stand behind. The headline rows above are the manufacturer’s own summary figures.

Acebeam X25 — all modes

The useful line here is Med 2: 5,400 lumens, 755 metres, an hour and a half. That is a searchlight by any sane definition, and it is the mode the X25 settles into after every turbo burst anyway. We made the same point in the X25 review.

The X25 also brings the practical extras the M1 does not: 60W fast charging (full in about 1.5 hours), an IP68 rating, dual switches on the body and handle, a detachable handle, a mechanical lockout for storage, and an RGB atmosphere light under the head for camp use.

Which one for which UAE job

What we’d change

Terminator M1. The 1,600-metre figure comes from 700 lumens for 110 seconds — it is a confirmation tool, not a working mode. The defocused LEP is close to useless at 177 m, and the LED side, while pleasant, is a 231-metre torch you can buy for a fifth of the money. It is also the more expensive of the two here, which will surprise anyone shopping on lumens alone. Desert Tan is the only colour.

Acebeam X25. One kilogram. You will feel it after ten minutes, and there is no getting around it — the head alone is 92 mm across. Turbo is a one-minute party trick. And a genuine documentation gap: Acebeam builds the X25 with either 16 × Cree XP-LR (23,000 lm / 1,553 m) or 16 × Luminus SFT-25R (22,000 lm / 1,505 m), and the listing does not state which emitter ships in a given unit. The difference is small — about 4% — but if it matters to you, ask us before you order and we will check the box.

How they compare to spending less

Both of these are specialist purchases. Before you commit at this level, know what the cheaper shelf does:

• Acebeam L19 2.0 — AED 369. A single-21700 thrower at 284 g. It gives up the searchlight width entirely but still reaches four figures. If “far” is all you want, start here and save a thousand dirhams. Full write-up: L19 2.0 review.
• Olight Marauder Mini 2 — AED 1,080. 10,000 lumens of flood plus a 750 m spot, in a body a third of the X25’s weight. The generalist of the group.
• Olight Seeker 4 Pro — AED 567. 4,600 lm, 260 m. Not a thrower at all, but the one most people should actually own.
• Acebeam X75 — AED 2,989. If the answer is “more lumens” rather than “more metres”, this is the 80,000-lumen end of the catalogue. See the X75 field test.

For the wider view of everything that reaches past a kilometre, we keep Best Long-Throw & Search Flashlights in the UAE updated, and the desert-specific pairing lives in Best Lights for the UAE Desert.

Should you buy either?

Most people reading this should not. A 1,500-metre torch solves a problem that most UAE buyers do not have, and both of these cost more than a very good headlamp, a very good EDC light and a spare battery combined. If you are still deciding what you actually need, start with How to Choose a Flashlight in the UAE.

If you do have the problem — off-road recovery, marine work, large-site security, organised search — then the split is clean:

Buy the Terminator M1 if the job is identification at distance and you carry the torch for hours. 990 metres on High, all night, for 300 grams, is something no LED torch on our shelf can do.

Buy the X25 if the job is illumination at distance. It is heavier and cheaper and far more useful in the moment when something has gone wrong and you need to see a hundred metres of ground at once, not a hundred metres of dot.

Both run on 21700 cells and both charge over USB-C — the X25 at 60W, full in about 1.5 hours. The same UAE summer rules apply to both: see the heat survival guide, and the battery explainer if you plan to carry spare cells. Flying with either? The X25 pack is 61.2 Wh, comfortably under the 100 Wh airline threshold — the full rules are in our lithium battery guide.

Specifications above are Acebeam’s published figures for the units we stock, checked against our live catalogue on 21 July 2026. Prices in AED, in stock at Lumens.ae.