No offense taken. I don't have a huge amount of experience with their lights. But I can tell just by looking at a 6P, that it is a bad design for an LED. And I can see the downsides of an M61, that is trying to make up for those shortcomings. This has nothing to do with whether it works for anybody or not. I'm glad that it works for you. And it works for many people. That still does not mean it's a good design.I don't want to be abrasively rude about this, but I do just want to highlight that not knowing the VME head is a sign you probably have very limited experience with Malkoff lights, and the OP should take your opinion with a bit of a grain of salt.
It gives me the impression you probably have little experience (or recent experience) with Malkoff lights, as the VME is one of the 3 main head types for Malkoffs. That means it's a higher chance that your impression of the performance of a Malkoff drop-in might be of a very old model, or is coming from a distant memory.
When you get a Malkoff, you have to decide if you want an e-series ecosystem, or a P60 ecosystem, and the VME is the head that let's you bridge that by using a P60 dropin with an e-series body.
Also, that means you've been missing out on one of the most fun aspects of Malkoff; using random dropins with a single 16340 body (or the AA body with a 14500), haha.
Usually the criticisms of Malkoff come to down the cost, the size, the cost, the relatively narrow selection of emitters, the cost, the lack of a super high peak lumen number on a 5-30 second turbo mode, the cost, and the price. You might be the first person I've heard not impressed with the reflectors. Sure, people complain they're not hot rods melting their emitters to hit an arbitrary and impressive big number, but the actual beam? A novel opinion, and perfectly fine that you feel that way. It's just a very outlier view.
I'd rate the Malkoff dropins as being quite nice. They do an impressive job of being floody with some respectable throw. BUT, because they're a balanced beam, it's easy to find other lights that have more purpose specific reflectors. That doesn't make Malkoff reflectors BAD, it just means they're not in any extreme direction. If you REALLY WANT flood, you can find some other light with more flood, and if you want throw, you can find more lights with more throw. I'd argue they do strike a very good balance of throw and flood. I guess you could argue they're not as deep as they COULD be for their size, but they tend to also be able to maintain their outputs without a stepdown, which most of the "more efficient" lights seem to use.
I mean, let's be honest. Chinese companies aren't custom building reflectors for their $20 wunderlampen, they're using off-the-shelf reflectors of a set size. So, while theoretically they could use a deeper reflector for the same size, most lights of a similar size seem to just use a smaller reflector to decrease the overall size. That's why Malkoffs tend to end up "bigger for their battery size." Similarly set up Chinese lights tend to just have smaller heads with similar performance.
If your argument is that Malkoff lights aren't at the extreme end of the min/max performance equation, I think that's a fair criticism, but that doesn't mean the McLeish reflector is bad. It's constrained by the nature of the product, but I'd argue it's still a very well implemented product.
Malkoff lights are going to win the Lumens Wars or any of the Candela Wars, but they are reliable and predictable, with good performance.
I've had the opposite experience in that I "wasted" a lot of time and money chasing the high number Chinese lights that were smaller and "brighter," only to wind my way back to Malkoff BECAUSE their reflectors create such a nice and balanced beam, AND they can sustain their output so well. I have lights that are multiple times brighter - on paper - than my Malkoffs, and the real world performance isn't a huge difference...so, then the build quality and reliability DOES start to matter. Malkoff doesn't make enthusiast hot rods, he makes reliable lights you can count on and that behave in a predictable way (that's why even the most devout Malkoff acolytes tend to not be in love with even his multi-mode lights).
I'll fully agree they're not the best option if a compact design or absolute highest output are your primary concerns. You get a Malkoff because you want a light that WILL perform well when you need it, and it will KEEP performing, year after year after year, and can be repaired or adjusted to fit the "mission needs" (as tacticool as that sounds, haha).
That all being said, they're definitely "bright enough" that many people buy L, LL, LLL, or even LLLL models of the emitters. It just depends on what you're trying to do with it.
If it was built from the ground up, with the same reflector in an E series size light, with the pill threaded directly into the reflector and head, I would think it was a great light.