That was my thread that you were referring to. Maybe the neutral tint Thrunite 2A is not as bright as the cool white, and goinggear.com just has it listed wrong. This would make sense as other lights usually have lower outputs with a neutral tint compared to the cool white version. But when I talked to goinggear about it they didn't seem to know.
Regarding the hotspot on the Neutron 2A neutral, I was playing with them last night (we were without power for 36 hours where I live in Arkansas) and you can only make out the hotspot within only a few feet. Beyond a few feet it looks like pure flood....which is great if you like/need a flood light. My quark AA2 S2 and R5 and especially the R2 ALL have a visible hotspot even out to distances. Yes the R5 has a very smooth transition from hotspot to flood, but the S2 has a more defined hotspot than the R5...more along the lines of the R2 just bigger. The R2 has the most defined hotspot...no surprise there since the LED is smaller than the R5 & S2. The point is though is that these three LEDs all generate a visible hotspot in the quarks quite easily due to their smaller size. The larger XM-L really struggles to generate a visible hotspot in such a small package. With a bigger head like in my Quark Turbo X or my EagleTac M3C4 XM-L there's no problem focusing the hotspot into something very throwy. But, in the Thrunite Neutron 2A the XM-L, to me, just produced a flood light. Another thing, for a flood light the overall beam was quite narrow. The overall beam profile of my quark AA2 lights and my fenix LD20 & LD10 were wider. This is strange to me for a flood light to be all flood but have somewhat of a narrow beam.
I'm not trying to bash the Neurtrons because if I wasn't comparing it to the quarks or fenix lights then it's truly an awesome light in every way. For me though, I like the quarks and the fenix lights beam profile better. I'd really like to test out a Neutron 1A though, and run it on a 14500 like CarpentryHero does. That sounds like the best way to run this light. I didn't want to go that route though because I was buying the two neutrons for my non-flashaholic nephews that will be using eneloops & alkalines only.
FYI - 4sevens (makers of the quark line) has told me twice over the phone that they had no plans to put a XM-L in their Quark line of lights with the exception of the Quark 123x2 Turbo X that sports an oversized head. They said they didn't like the beam that the XM-L produced in these small lights. After experimenting with the Neutron 2A neutral lights I have to say I now understand why. I have not experimented with the cool white version of the neutrons, so there could be a difference that I'm unaware of.
A broad hotspot and narrower spill would be more useful for my purposes:shrug:
