XP-L HI emitters cost a lot more though. I give that about zero chance of happening, based on how cheap this light is priced. In fact the originators of this group buy have spoken and having any different emitter choice has already been ruled out.
You want something besides XP-G3? Great, you can build it yourself. I will be doing the same. This light is cheap enough at its current price that it could be shipped to me as an empty host + driver and I’d still be very happy with it.
I was really hoping the prototypes would ship with XP-G3 so we could settle the topic of whether they’re okay, but it came with XP-G2 instead.
Even with XP-G2, I’m not terribly happy with the beam. I’ve never much liked the 10507 optic, since it tends to add artifacts and a ring. Here’s how a beam slice looks in the first prototype:
This should improve quite a bit with a 10511 optic.
FWIW, I upgraded the thermal regulation behavior. I still need to do some extensive testing on it, but hopefully it will behave. Specifically, it adjusts the output in about 640 very small steps until it thinks it is no longer too hot or too cold… and the adjustment speed now changes depending on how far it needs to go. Additionally, the adjustments are based on the projected future temperature, which works like a car trying to “steer into” the curves.
Hopefully this will allow it to react quickly but also avoid oscillations after it has reached a maintainable level. I won’t know for sure until I test it though, and that takes a while.