Im not willing to throw more money than needed on lights. Exhibitions like Iwa can be pretty hard on your purse if you are to weak to resist 
Interesting light. And unlike their smaller W10, the WL20 is a zoomie. It should be more practical at short range, while the fixed-focus W10 is basically just a long range spotlight or a short-range pointer.
This one’s too expensive for me though, but I like the idea of white laser flashlights.
You guys are probably right and after much research I found a site claiming the Maxabeam Gen 2 was 3 million lux on low, 4.5million on mid, and 6 million on high. But what I don’t understand is how you can have a dimmer light ( maxabeam is about 450 on mid mode) with a less focused beam (1 degree beam divergence) and it have three times the lux of a brighter light ( WL20 is 500 lumens) and a more focused beam(WL20 is 0.8 degree divergence). Unless I’m looking at things wrong the only thing I can come up with is the 500 lumen rating for the WL20 is the lumens at phosphor and not the emitted lumens, and the optical system is very inefficient, and the 450 lumens for the Maxabeam is the emitted lumens and the bulb lumens is higher.
The distribution of lumens is not always even, you can have all the lumens evenly spread out, like this:
Or have them distributed differently, with more concentrated in the middle and less in the outer parts:
If both of the flashlights in the images above had the same divergence and lumens, the second one will have higher lux because it has more of the lumens concentrated in the center.
The maxabeam has a standard reflector which means the distance from the light source to the reflector surface varies from very short to very long, producing a spot that looks like the second image, with a high intensity in the center and then lower as it goes out.
The WL20 has an aspheric lens which produces a distribution more like the first image, since the distance from the light source to all points on the lens is pretty similar, producing an even distribution of light in the spot.
Those values sound accurate. Why don’t you try calulating divergenace using the spot size I mentioned above.
Ahh those pictures demonstrate your point perfectly. I forgot about one being aspheric and the other utilizing a reflector, although the same affect can still happen apart from 2 different focusing mechanisms (or whatever the technical term is).
I don’t really see why its necessary considering Peak Beam gives the official beam divergence on their website :shrugs:
I tried it myself. I got 0.133° for the central hotspot with maximum intensity. Their 1° value might be for the dimmer corona around the hotspot.
This is based on the following things:
Diameter of light source: 0.125mm (this is the diameter of the part of the arc with the highest luminance on the tip of the kathode)
Maximum focal length of reflector: 94mm
I calculated the spot size in different distances (using the thin lens equation) and then the divergance based on the size in two different distances and the distance between these two points (using the equation for beam divergance). Also note that while Peakbeam notes a spot size of 2in (5.2cm) in a distance of 30m, I only get 4cm at that distance with my calculation.
I won’t be surprised if it beats some of the best throwers in eyeball tests even if the ANSI figure isn’t as high. It has fewer lumens, so it must be keeping more photons in the hotspot. If it practically has no spill, it’ll be an awfully fun light to play with. The $299 price is better than I expected too.
Wow…
That WL20 is 1milion candela laser flashlight…
Future is here and it seems my modding days are over cause I will not have any need to mod super throwers when led is clearly surpassed by laser.
I just hope laser module is capable of withstanding centerfire rifle recoil.
I would wait before making conclusions. As you mention the robustness ist definitely something to keep in mind. The tint will be a bit different. We also don’t know how nice the light will be when defoccused. The spot might also be less even. Add to this the increased expense.
Are the W10 / WL20 really focussable?
The blue /cyan point in the video of the WL20 beam (the W10 has a nice white spot) looks weird. Maybe the phosphor is not where it should be and the blue laser light is mixed with white light. I could imagine that this issue is one of the problems if using these new technology.
I'm sure that LED manufacturers (even those with experience in laser technology) present laser diodes with excited phosphor in one package in the next months / years. Maybe they look the same like the LED we know and maybe they could also easily be reflowed? I remember that Osram presented such a concept some time ago...
The blue in the middle just seems like chromatic aberration.
I’m not sure why there would be a blocked hole in the center, it is an aspheric light not a reflector light.
They may be using a phosphor with the laser diode placed behind it, which would require a piece of light-absorbing material directly in the center of the lens to prevent laser light form leaking.
If the center of the lens is blocked then that would create the “hole” that you can see in the video, and regular chromatic aberration would make it look blue.
At farther distances this hole and the blue tint would disappear.
The light is fixed focus single mode. Chromatic aberration is pretty significant. Could see no hole though. Tint differences were visible up to 20-30m. As it was indoors I could not check further distances.
i was not impressed by the laser lights tbh...
What’s the practical use for a beam profile such as the WL20?
Sometimes things are only done because they can be done. Most of us do have many lights with zero practical use 
no one has seen a beam now, only a spot in a bright exhibition hall.
i could imagine one would like to mount that on a rifle?
btw
the GT made a brighter Spot ;)
did you bring your GT along? I thought about it, but did not want to haul that huge beast along all the time just to stomp the WL20
on the second day..
got a lot WOWs ;)