I setup the charging for 1A at first but they were worried about overheating the cell and possibly causing issues with cheap cells in testing and I had to agree, better safe then sorry so I dropped it down to 500ma charge rate.
You can technically raise it back up by swapping out a resistor if you really wanted.
Yes, it uses the same optic so it will have the same beam. The only change to the beam is a slightly thicker bezel for some reason so thus a little lower OTF lumens. Although on the plus side the tint shift on the XP-G3 seems to be a little reduced as well.