If anything, worse.
My whole ’502 saga began with getting really nice ’502s (and later C8s), with either real Cree or at least decent LB clones. CW, yeah, but hella bright, at least 500lm or so. I finally got enough ’502s to play with, then got into C8s.
Decent C8s, metal reflectors, decent switch, good emitter, ’though still a rather cheap/crappy driver (parallelled resistors for “regulation”), but then they started to go seriously downhill, a race to the bottom.
Lousy emitters, not even clones of LB clones, plastic(!) reflectors, the XP-E wannabe would throw a nice tight beam but maybe with a little luck would be in triple-digit lumens (I’d guesstimate 70-80 or so), and tubes so thin you’d think they were rolled Al-foil. Oh, and the dinky little Al pills maybe 1/3 the weight of a FT brass pill that’d fit. They’d only be good for an XP-E/-E2 if not pushed too hard.
The ’98s I got were also pretty good, would grab’n’hold the head position from one extreme to the other, had a decent switch, hollow pill but still would be… okay… for an XM-L if not pushed too hard (head would rarely even get warm if left on high, so that’s worrisome).
Anyway, the later ones I got for my gf, only a coupla months later, were garbage with a capital gar. The heads would grab but then flop around the middle, one lasted a whopping 30sec when we were trying it out for the first time, really lousy. Returned both without even looking at the other one.
Sad, too, as she liked the flexibility of a zoomie.
So no, I wouldn’t trust a ’98 clone to be worth a damn nowadays. I’d have to be really desperate to try one.
But then again, all the oohs and aahs about those cheap-ass A100s and G700s out there, what can you expect from reviews, either?
I might get a ’98 from FT if I really really wanted one (but then again that’s where I got those POS AT01s), but I’d avoid the usual grab-bag crap from Amazon and stick with the better-known no-clone lights like from Thorfire and/or Sofirn.
At least you’re not likely to get a SF11 or SP32 clone from some seller like ItchyPanda or AngryBeaver or anything.