Thanks guys, both of your replies are very true. I've never owned an 18650 LED light, so I'm not that familiar with them.
I'm a big fan of 18650 lights for their power, runtimes, and rechargeability.
But you have to realize that they are a different animal from primaries, so what often (always?) happens is that the designer of a light will either optimize their electronics for best efficiency and power with either the 18650
or CR123 primaries.
Whenever you see a light that "can" use both, what you get is a light that works better on one than it does on the other. The example that quickly comes to mind is the A8 and A9 Tiablo.
Either of those lights will use both 18650 or CR123 batteries, but the A8 works better on the 18650 while the A9 works much better on CR123 primaries. You would choose which of those lights to get based upon which type of battery you intended to use most often in them.
So what I do is to simply choose a light that uses a particular battery best and go with it.
Since I have lights that operate on just 18650's, and I have lights that use just CR123's, I have all the bases covered. I use the 18650 lights more regularly due to their "free" lumens of rechargeability, but I also have my CR123 lights ready with lot's of stashed primaries ready for power outages.
As far as waiting for the "next" generation of LED, if you do that, you'll never buy another light again because the "next, new" LED will ALWAYS be just around the corner.
My opinion is that, starting with the Q5's, we have now gotten to the point where any light with that LED or later is more than enough for 99% of any situation.
In fact, I use the lower settings on all my lights more often than their higher settings because I simply don't need that much light most of the time. For the (rare) times when I need some "real" light, I just whoop out my AE 25W Xenide and have at it. :naughty:
For the record, I've already pre-ordered both the ST and the Pro because I really like "free" lumens. :twothumbs
My .02
