Got mine today, thanks for the fast shipping! I just happened to have charged up a pair of Titanium 1000 mAH NiMH AAA cells earlier in the day, so I put one in the new Arc and the other in a 1st gen brand P 3-led Matterhorn, ultra power, with what I think is the "snow23" led as opposed to the newer snow29, running at around 35 ma per led (100+ ma total). Since these cells were freshly charged I think they were both at around 1.42 volts. I did a wall bounce test in my closet and the 1-led Arc seemed at first to blow away the 3-led Peak for total output. However after both lights were running for a few minutes I think they were about equal in lumens with the Peak using much more total battery power to run its 3 leds. I think both of these lights are somewhat sensitive to input voltage and I do have a couple of new L92 AAA lithium cells around, so I may try another test. In any case, the new Arc completely crushes my old one (a v3.x AAA-S holding a cheap alkaline cell of indeterminate age). The 3-led Matterhorn has a larger hot spot of comparable brightness to the CS Arc and much better tint, but the Arc has a lot smoother and larger spill. The Arc is also a little bit shorter on the keychain. It seems to me that an Arc with three of the DS leds at 35 mA would probably beat the Fenix L0DCE in lumens. The CS version is a bit dimmer than the L0DCE on medium so the DS will probably be a little bit brighter than the L0DCE on medium.
I've never liked camo finishes and so I find this light pretty ugly, but of course I expected that all along, and I'm sure users who like camo will be happy with this. If I keep it I might try to refinish it somehow, but I'm more likely to toss it on BST pretty soon, which is why I didn't use the included Duracell battery (want to be able to sell the package as LNIP, battery unused and light only played with for a few minutes). Sooner or later I'll buy the new DS model. It's really quite an advance over the v3.x generation.
I remember when these camos first came out, they were sold at a premium price and were snapped up immediately, and then some were traded on BST at even higher prices. So I'm surprised that this new supply of them has suddenly appeared.
I tried switching the battery tubes around between my v3 standard and the v4 camo, and found each head screws into both tubes just fine. The v3 head lights up just fine on both tubes, but the v4 head only lights on the v4 tube. Switching batteries around made no difference. It's not real obvious what the cause of this might be. I do notice the solder blob on my v3 is a bit smooshed down and maybe I should retouch it.
