After the way TAD Gear rudely, and repeatedly mis-treated one of our CPF members publicly....Not only will I not buy anything from them, I will not trust them, or just take their word for anything.
We have several vendors here that are well respected, and active members of the CPF community.
www.Fenix-store.com,
www.batteryjunction.com, and
www.lighthound.com. I would buy an NDI or the new Nite Core Extreme from any of these 3 without a moments hesitation. I forgot one.
www.brightguy.com
Unfortunately, you can not by an NDI from any of the above dealers. They just don't carry them. If you want one, you either get it from Hong Kong, Canada, or some other country. In the US, you are stuck with TAD GEAR.
While I don't approve the way TAD GEAR treated one our CPF members in an instance that had nothing to do with the NDI, remember this was one transaction out of many.
Would you trash Neiman Marcus if a friend of yours was treated rudely by single salesperson? You probably would, but I would trash the salesperson, and file a complaint with higher ups before I would trash Neiman Marcus. If general management defended the action of that employee, I would have more reason to stay away from the company.
While I have my doubts that the US version is different than the ASIAN version, I have to give TAD GEAR credit for at least honestly advertising the output of the NDI as 130 lumens, not as 190 lumens per nitecore.com website. Tad Gear specifically states on their web site that the US version " features an improved head and threads." They don't have to prove anything to me. If the light they send me is not improved over my HKequipment NDI, I always have the option to return it to TAD GEAR. That's a lot easier and less expensive than shipping a light back to Hong Kong. Finally, even if the light isn't improved (frankly, I have no problems with my "asian" version), I hopefully won't have to wait as long to get it as I did from HK. The few more dollars I wil spend insn't even a consideration. I spent more today than this to put gas in my van.