I think very few people here are going to disagree with you on this. And defintely don’t think you’re offending anyone. Until Samsung/Panasonic/Sony starts making 26650’s, 21700 are the way to go.
The best 26650 cells can sustain significantly higher currents with much less voltage sag than 21700s of the same capacity. Not a big deal for lights drawing 10A or less but for lights with multi or high-power emitters there is definitely an advantage.
Just like we now have some 16340, 18350 and 14500 with newer chemistries the same will almost certainly happen for 26650 down the road as wel.
I did not know about 26650’s better handling of voltage sag with higher current loads… hopefully we see manufacturers putting more effort into developing non battery pack 26650 batteries. I was defintely against the 21700 movement until about 4 months ago, mostly because I needed a new charger for them. I was totally on the 26650 team until I experienced the array of lights using 21700’s, and there benefits as well. I have some Efest 26650 4200 mah purple that are pretty good, but my ft03s for example seems to run better on the 40t’s. Who knows, I have no way of measuring it afterall.
The XHP35 GT definitely has a hotter beam than the XHP70.2 but I much prefer the 70.2. It’s like a light cannon on turbo. I’ll see if I can take a comparison picture this evening.
Decided to try checking Mateminco flashlights in Taobao site, and noticed that the picture of the "Mateminco MT04" looks quite similar to the Astrolux EA01.
However, there seem to be more variants of the MT04 than the EA01.
Astrolux EA01, single SST40 or single XHP50.2 (TIR optic)
From what I can understand, the Mateminco MT04 can also come in single SST40 or single XHP50.2, but additionally also single SST20 (?).
Plus also there are quad-LED variants (also 4x SST20 / 4x SST40 / 4x XHP50.2)
**note: I may misunderstand the product description of the Mateminco MT04 on the Mateminco Taobao website though. It could perhaps be the MT04 uses the same body as the EA01, but the MT04 is quad-LED whereas the EA01 is single-LED...
If only tesla or samsung made 26650 cells but they are not , consider 26650 a bit outdated . 21700 is the future and other batteries where 26650 will not.
Newer chemistries and production methods trickle down to less common cell formats. 26650, 18350, 16340 and 14500 have already benefitted from this in the past year or two.