The FW3A has gone through so many hardware revisions and spinoffs that it’s really hard to keep track. It doesn’t help that nearly all of the revisions have been done silently, so people only find out by opening up the item and finding that it’s different.
In other words, YMMV. I have no idea who is shipping which versions, or what the most recent ones are like.
The safest bet is to order from a vendor who cares and pays attention, like Calvin at Illumn, who can answer questions about the current status.
About the LEDs, it really depends on personal preference. Me, I like the XP-L HI 3D version… but I don’t like any of the others. I dislike SST-20 in particular, since it looks rather green on the modes I use, and it sucks the blue out. So despite having a high CRI rating, it makes all the colors look wrong… even after correcting it with a minus-green filter.
It’s also probably a good idea to open the front of a new light to make sure it doesn’t have flux on the LEDs. That has happened sometimes… like here’s how one of mine looked when it was brand new, before I cleaned it:
Not sure about that. Although inquired with Lumintop several months ago, and they offered the FW3A with the “plastic” glass lens and FW3A with Carclo glass lens. The plastic lens version was a bit cheaper (I think something like $1 cheaper) — but that was several months back…
Hello. Just bought one from lumintop. They made terrible engravings on body and tailcap Where can I buy clean one? Without any logos and engravings on body?
Yes, it’s normal for regular flashlight, but not for this stylish product. FW3A has beautiful clean author’s design out of the box. No reason to trash it.
I agree with imshara. For this particular light the clean look is one of best “features”. Lumintop is allowed to change this of course, but it would have been nice if they would announce it first.