It's not very bright compared to the popular three and five watt Luxeon lights, but that's on purpose. It's "design philosophy was to give it good long runtime, durable construction and unique looks, with a middle of the road, but very useful light output.
That's why it uses six "regular" white LED's, and uses the lenses to focus and concentrate their output, rather than using a single more power-hungry Luxeon. The focused output does look good though in beam shots. The six unfocused LED's in the center are to provide better wide-area flood. They also fill in the dead spot in the center where the beams from the lenses are shining past for close-in lighting.
It does indeed succeed at it's gonzo-cool looks, the construction is very very durable for a polymer light, while not Truly dive rated it's "waterproof" for most users purposes. It will withstand being dropped in a pond without difficulty. I believe it's made out of GE Xenoy resin which is an very tough plastic, similar to Lexan but less brittle.
Newer production LumaRays might be somewhat brighter, as I recall that they were going to start using the better Nichia LED's soon.
A good car analogy to the FL12 would be a car that's tough and has both looks and features like a Hummer or a Range Rover (O-rings, glow powder in the lenses, Xenoy resin, the ball-joint latching system), is fuel efficient like a Honda (Long runtime on C batteries), and it all averages out to acceleration like a Chevy sedan (Moderate light output).
It's definitely on my buy list.
