I have the drop in and I must say that I like it. I haven't used it very much as I've only had it for a couple of weeks.
In my playing around with it I was swapping out LED for the stock bulb and let me tell you there is no comparison. As the lumen ratings go, as rated by the manufacturer, the upgrade is more than 9x brighter and while I feel that may be a stretch, there is definitely a huge difference (140 lumen over 15.2 lumen).
The upgrade does suck back a little bit more power than stock. I calculated that the stock pulled almost exactly 1 watt while the upgrade used 1.25 watts. I tested this on freshly charged Titanium 2100 LSD cells. A quarter of a watt might not seem like a huge deal but that's a 25% hit on runtime.
This light does not have great throw. It can throw maybe 50 meters (about 150 feet) before you can't really see light anymore. As for spill it has plenty.
The beam is really smooth. My brother couldn't figure out why my beam was so nice compared to the Cree in his Nitecore D10. It has a really nice transition from the hotspot to spill. It has this I believe because it uses a Seoul LED.
The little I used it in practical use was when I was trying to start a fire. Since I was working at close range and needed to see everything I just took the head off and was rewarded with 180 degrees of flood. IMO better for the use than with the reflector.
There are a couple of complaints I have with it though.
1) It's lumen output are overrated. I would say it is closer to 100-120.
2) It gets kind of hot with the head off. With the head on it doesn't get quite as hot (not sure why) as opposed to having the head off. the dropin never gets too hot to touch but I feel that a better job could have been done in the heatsinking department.
3) The reflector that comes with it is too small. It just doesn't fit quite as tight as stock. This makes the LED off centre from the reflector but with a little bit of patience it is possible to get the reflector in the middle.
One other thing I noticed was that although you retain the focusablility of the Maglite, you only have about a turn before you run out of thread and the head comes off.
In my brother's upgrade, the LED came unsoldered on one side. Not a huge deal, just a touch with the iron and it works again.
Overall I think that this is a good product and worth the money IF you already have the Maglite. If you don't have the Maglite then by the time you buy the upgrade and light you are better off with a cheapie from DX with modes.
