As this is now declared a discussion thread, I have an opinion on the Q4:
It is tempting to want the Q4 to be compatible with alkalines and Eneloops and I am not for it for two reasons:
1) there are quite a few pretty nice flashlights out there already that run on 4xAA cells. Even if the Q4 will be a quad, that does not add an awful lot to what is out there, a bit more output and less throw. The Q4 will not stand out other than that it may have a BLF developed nice user interface.
2) in case of dual compatibility I do not see how 14500 li-ions can be run to the max when the light also is able to run on alkalines/NiMhâs (but Iâd love to be wrong, Iâm not an expert on drivers). The full advantage of high current 14500 li-ion cells can only be had with a dedicated li-ion driver.
So my proposal is very simple: shrink the Q8!!
(Honey, I shrunk the Q8!)
It is almost as simple as asking Thorfire to ask just that: do everything the same as the Q8, just smaller (detail: I think that many fine fins like the LuckySun D80 has will help). But I would like to try to achieve 2 extra things: 1)see where the shrunken Q8 can be made even a bit smaller, to get the Q4 smaller than any 4xAA-size light out there (to start,a quad reflector is already shorter than a reflector for a single led), 2)add onboard charging via a micro-USB port.
On max, the output will be 4 times the output of the BLF-X5, so 4800 lumen on fresh IMRâs. Unrivalled by anything this size! Of course it can only be run on max for very short bursts of 30 seconds, probably limited by a simple timer, but that is where al those lower modes come in.