Today I picked up the E40 from the post office. Short impression:
The plastic handle is nice but as I supposed, just slightly slipper compared to the composite handle of Jetbeam PA40, but not a problem. I find changing the modes works good with one hand.
The tint is very cool but I am glad it's no greenish in my example. As we understood this is a thrower, and a serious one. At 220lm mode it outthrows Fenix TK30 at 630lm mode!
Hotspot is very focused similar to TK50 and with a slight corona. When I compare it to Fenix TK20 I found that the spill actually isn't much more brighter, very similar. The hotspot, however, is almost 4 times brighter. A much bigger part of the around 70% higher total output is consequently placed in the very intense hotspot.
Total spill width is exactly the same size as TK20. Compared to Fenix TK10 total output is slightly higher(but spill is dimmer) as one could expect based on the new ANSI lumen measuring.
When I try E40 around the house I got a similar feeling like with TK50: the brightness difference between hotspot and spill is so large, and the extremely intense hotpot makes so much attention so it isn't really comfortable at short distance. I actually had prefered a textured reflector to smooth out the beam a bit, the throw had been good anyway.
I post some beamshots compared to Fenix TK20 with same aperture. TK20 to left and E40 to right.
First 1/15s for comparing the spill and tint:
Then at 1/1000s which clearly shows the difference of hotspot intensity:
Updated: I just finished a runtime test at 220lm mode. The batteries are IKEA alkalines, exp. date: 2017-01-30.
The light was standing in a cup shining up on the ceiling without any active cooling. I checked the lightmeter every 10 minute. During the first 30 minutes the brightness slowly dropped to 90% of initial and after that absolutely stable to more than 1 hour and 30 minutes. At 1 hour and 40 minutes the brightness had dropped to 58%.
I didn't notice exactly were it went out of regulation but at the moment I noticed it on the lightmeter it dropped pretty fast so I think it had begun only some minute ago or so. The result is then practically stable output for almost 1 hour and 40 minutes. Actually I had expected slightly longer time. Considering Jetbeam PA40 did 3 hours and 50 minutes at 220lm mode it's very clear that the efficiency is far lower. Anyway this is a budget model and do you want a great 4AA thrower it's a cheap way to go! More than 1,5 hours regulated output with cheap alkalines at highest mode still makes E40 very useful if you don't have NiMh or Lithium cells.