I have actually been pretty happy with this light. I got it for 70 bucks and it is a great fit for that price range. I am not sure its worth 100 though.
Beam-wise it has a good flood corona and fairly tight hotspot. Compared the the A6 Polestar, it's hotspot and corona are about 60% of the diameter.
I was very pleased with the beam on this flashlight. It has a wide bright-spot with a good sized useful spill. It really lights up an area, but still retains some pretty decent throw in my opinion, being easily able to see details of my garden from 70 feet away at night.
The beam is really nice with no artifacts or funny looking corona at all. It emits a solid white light. The specs call it 6700K, but I don't quite believe it. There is no blue-tint at all, and it looks to me more like a 5400ish K. Colors look natural in my estimation. My camera sucks but it does at least accurately capture the correct tint of the light.
When the light arrived, it was in a manilla envelope with some bubble wrap. It comes with the flashlight assembled in 1x18650 mode, with an anti-roll thingee at the end with a cheapo strap attached to the anti-roll device. Then, the extender tube is included as well. That's it. NO instructions at all, nothing.
I personally believe that a flashlight really doesn't need a briefcase-sized guncase. I do admit that it makes you think you are really getting something special though, and prevents damage in transit. I think a middle ground could be had though. A small cheap plastic case 9 inches by 5 by 2 would be sufficient to ship the light, extender tube, then throw in some minimal instructions and a few O-rings.
As it stands, my light was not at all damaged but this style of shipping is more akin to DX and other lowest price-tier sellers.
Another modest problem is that the extender tube does not appear to fit! Actually it works just fine, but it is not intuitively obvious what is going on. You see, there is a threaded anti-roll device that screws inbetween the bottom of the tube and the tactical switch. When you take the switch off, the extender tube will not fit, because the anti-roll device acts as a spacer which prevents the threads from contacting.
So you have to take off the anti-roll thingee, which is also not obvious. It unscrews and then stops unscrewing. At that point you must force it over the O-ring to pull it off. Basically, it feels like it should not come off. Once it is removed, the extender tube can be attached.
The extender tube comes with a ring that acts as a spacer. To fit the tactical switch to the extender tube (or the regular tube for that matter), you MUST have either the anti-roll spacer OR the ring spacer. In my pictures I ditched the anti-roll so it would fit in my pocket better. Anyways, this is not intuitive and I did see several complaints about the extender tube 'not working'.
In any case, some basic instructions would alleviate these concerns and produce a more positive opening experience.
I really like the UI for this light. You lightly press the forward clicky to turn it on and release to turn it off. It is pretty sensitive. If you have a mode on for more than 2 seconds, memory will apply. When you turn the light off and back on, you will be in the same mode. Anyways, the light-tap lets you quickly cycle thru the different modes, which are High, Medium, Low, Strobe, and SOS.
A full click turns the light on and keeps it on. What I personally like is that once the light is on, you can NOT change modes! A half-click will not advance modes, which will cause some people to gripe. However, many lights do use half-presses to change modes which means a simple tap or bump against something or even shaking the light will force a mode change. A lot MORE people gripe about this from what I've read.
The memory feature works very well and you can effectively use this flashlight as a single mode light if desired. All you have to do is simply keep the light on for 2 seconds or more at a time and it will never change modes.
No UI is perfect for all users and people are going to gripe no matter what, but I think this UI is very solid.
The top of the light has a nub which allows it to work with flat-topped batteries such as the AW 2600 protected 18650. This is a nice feature which some lights neglect. I really like the battery versatility that this light has as far as two size configurations and support for multiple battery types.
Heat Sinking appears to work well. Within 5 minutes on high the light starts to warm up. The head becomes warm, then transfers the heat down the entire shaft of the light. This indicates to me that no undue amount of heat is being built-up in the pill. I have not disassembled the light to prove this though... someone more experienced would have to perform that analysis.
The lens is very clear and the aluminum orange peel reflector looks great.
The knurling is not very aggressive. The light holds fine to me, but some might want more 'feel'.
The light has an O-ring for every joint, so I can see that it would be waterproof. I would not want to test this theory however. If you transformed it often between extender tube and non-tube, you would have to put on and take off the spacers, which rub over the O-ring each time. I can see the O-rings breaking due to the stress eventually.
The flashlight has an anti-roll at the head of the light. By itself with the extender tube on, it is insufficient to prevent rolling. It works just fine in 1x18650 configuration, OR with the screw-on anti-roll at the bottom of the light.
to verify.
