Fenix LD40 is plastic?

I was reading today about the Fenix LD40. I have a couple of Fenix lights and this light is just about perfect except for the plastic body. It has a neutral white XP-G R4, has a forward clicky, remembers the last mode, has a separate mode button on the tail (perfect!). You can bypass the flashy modes, and the size is pretty good at 2xAA long and 2xAA wide so it runs on 4 common AA batteries. All of that is great. But I can't get past the fact that this is a $75 flashlight that is made of plastic. At least they call it plastic instead of Nitrolon (Surefire's word for plastic).

Meanwhile I came very close to buying a Quark CR123^2 Tactical in neutral white for most of the same reasons above. I have to lights I built with XP-G R4 neutrals and they are definitely my favorites. One is a 3-mode P60 and the other is a 2-mode Aurora SH-035 (1xAA or 14500). But I like Quark's idea of being able to program in two modes with the low capable of being really low or just normal low. I'm not crazy about turning the bezel to switch modes, so I think the LD40 has the advantage of being able to change modes with your thumb on the tail instead of using another hand. Ultimately I held off on confirming the order because I realized I like the two lights I have and I don't think it's worth the extra for the Quark to get basically what I have already.

Did you buy your R4 neutrals from cutter? They have reasonable prices and MCPCB mounting, but it's $13 shipping which is annoying, but it's not too bad if I build up a few items.

How did you build up the p60? DX has a kit but I think it's for xr-e.

On the whole plastic thing, I actually like quality quality polymer textures better, but I'm not sure about heat in a led light.

As an aside, do these more expensive lights have replaceable emitters (star mount)? At least one nice thing about chinese generics is their generic-ness.

I did get them from Cutter through a CPF group buy, so they came out to about $9 each shipped. The guy who did the group buy didn't care about making a profit (rare at CPF), he just wanted to reduce his own shipping costs. So he sold the LED's to people at his cost plus his cost for re-shipping. He only wanted 2 LED's and I think he fried one of them, so he wound up short in the end and had to get on to someone else's group buy for more money. If I had known that at the time, he could have had one of mine.

I got an empty P60 from DX (XR-E hole so it was plenty big; there are a few artifacts in the beam, but they're not bad) and the driver from Shiningbeam. The only thing I was missing was an isolator disk so the reflector doesn't short the LED. Seems like they would sell those pretty cheap (seems like KD has them but you have to buy 100 of them or something).

The LD40 has an aluminum head, probably for the heat. Only the body is plastic. I haven't actually seen one in person, but one of my favorite things about all of these lights is they feel solid being made out of aluminum.

Seems like a lot of the higher end lights are not easily modded. Certainly not as easy as most budget lights.

The problem if only the head is metal is that flashlights depend on conducting through you instead of convection as their primary heat outlet when input goes up. Maybe it's still ok, or they designed a bunch of fins on the inside, but output may drop if left on high.