Thanks for the to-the-point description. Brightness/runtime? Give me a lightsaber for 30 seconds :D
So it seems choosing MXDL over the focusing one was a blunder, which I now have to fix ASAP :)
My MXDL arrived yesterday. My take on this light is pretty much the same as Don's. The E-Bay seller (go_market) was really responsive. Ordered the light on June 1, it shipped on June 2, I received it in New Mexico on June 7. I don't have to have a light that burns holes in things @ 10 feet but this one could be a little brighter.
Bottom line is a 5 for looks & a 3 for brightness.
Mike
I dug out some AA lights and got the close up beams. Here are the lights:
MX Power ML-310, Powerlight, Ultrafire C3 stainless steel, Trustfire F22, MDXL, BLF DeLight, Tank007 E07.
Here are the beams at 2" from the beige wall - actually it's the side off a just retired server. 11 years it ran till the 4th PSU and a hard drive died. Best uptime was 3 years! Would have been more but for a power cut. Kept it on a UPS while we moved it whenI put in ethernet cabling a few years ago to keep the uptime.
The more powerful lights are stepped down to their lowest mode sothey didn't drown out the less powerful ones. All of them were fed freshly charged Eneloops for the purpose.
There is actually a huge hole in the centre of the beam from the MX Power at this range but it is too overexposed to show up. Notice how enormously wide the spill of the MDXL light is (3rd from right). The only thing even close is the Tank007 on the right. The Powerlight - second from left - has a nice beam though my personal favourite is the Trustfire F22 but then it cost about 5x as much. It has a lovely vanilla colour that doesn't show up here - the bluer lights here have shifted the colour balance.
Now at about 100mm (4") to lose the hole in the MX Power beam.
The Tank007 beam is almost washing out the DeLight so I took out the brighter ones and left the Powerlight, the MDXL and the DeLight.
The Powerlight has the tightest, and nicest beam of the three, the MDXL far and away the widest beam of anything I've got apart from a pure flood Zebralight headlamp.
Done in a hurry as it was raining.
MDXL
BLF cheapskates' DeLight
Control
I'd have to wait 3 months for better quality darkness. I am north of Labrador in Canada and it is what passes for summer around here - the rain gets a little bit warmer. It reached a whole 11 degrees today (50F)
I would love to have weather like that all year long.
Recieved today. A quick test about the same drightness as my powerlight but draws less current in single cell mode at least.
printed on body Smallsun 5W.
How do you check current draw?
Learned something new today. Thank you sir! :)
I had to hunt around the net abit to find it first of myself. 
It took me a few minutes to figure out that I had to move the red lead from V to 10A. lol
I guess you have checked the draw on every torch you own?? 
Who has'nt lol.......
Cool, that's a pretty nice looking light for the price. How are the connections? Any flickering? Sections fit together fairly well? How is the beam quality? As Don and I have mentioned, the Powerlight has a suprisingly good beam by any standards, to say nothing of a $4.28 budget light. It has a nice buttery color and a smooth beam with no shadows. So the Powerlight beam is the one to beat.
Thanks for those pictures Don! If you ask me, the MXDL is not a flop by any means; that's an impressively large flood from a rather small light. In fact it sounds like a useful tool for any budgeteer to keep on his shelf.
Thanks for the update Mike! That is is incredibly fast shipping, I wonder how he does it? DealExtreme should be ashamed. They can't even get the product from their suppliers within 5 days most of the time, to say nothing of the shipment.
What color is the beam of your light? My BLF DeLights have a slight but noticeable bluish tinge. My current and only MXDL light (good choice too, by the way) also has a bluish tinge. But my Powerlights have a buttery or, as Don says, vanilla colored beam that is really impressive.
Again, pretty good at 15 days from China.
First impressions. It has the same tailcap and switch as the DeLight, the MDXL, the Powerlight et al. Which means the extension tube ought to fit and work with all of these. Had a bit of fun legoing bits together and taking pics which will go up tonight. It really doesn't bear thinking about how long it'd take to upload them over the 3G modem I'm using just now. None of them seemed unhappy with 2.8V from two Eneloops.
Will try some white wall beamshots under the desk - the walls above it are far too brightly lit for beamshots.
Very nice! Can't wait to see detailed comments from everyone on the C3 clone.
This thread epitomizes budget lighting at its best, in my opinion. They used to buy spices from far away in the Orient. Now we buy flashlights. 8)
Cheaper too - famously, pepper in Scotland was worth considerably more than its weight in gold in the 17th and 18th centuries. With gold at $40 a gramme just now, a 40 gramme flashlight for under $5 has to be a much better deal.
First impressions - pictures to come. A bit brighter on 2AA than the Powerlight and a much warmer beam colour. This can and will vary from sample to sample. On a single AA (All NiMH as no fresh alkalines around just now) it is not as bright as the DeLight and is fractionally brighter, but a lot warmer coloured than my Powerlight that I have with me.
I think I am only waiting for two lights now. And two sets of fine pointed forceps. Must remember not to buy any more this month (well, we'll see if I can make it to the end of the week, let alone month.) Since the car needs a new cylinder head gasket and that is a $750 job, I'd better not buy any more till that's done and paid for.
The Small Sun "5W" does not have interchangeable parts with a real C3. Just tried some C3 bodies and tailcaps with the clone extension and tailcap. They sorta, kinda fit but the thread pitch on the real C3 is much finer. However the extension works just fine on the Powerlight
And the BLF DeLight. That is one of the shorter, earlier DeLights with the tailcap from the Powerlight which works just fine. This is the one with the too short tailcap that works fine with the tailcap off the MDXL and the MDXL works just fine with the tailcap from this DeLight.
Here's the original Small Sun with its extension tube. The finish on the extension is very different from the much glossier tailcap and body.
Here's the LED - yet another unknown. This one would undoubtedly vapourise if anything even close to 5W went through it - the one on the Powerlight has six bond wires, this appears to have only two and those are the limiting factors for current into the LED. Most white LEDs have a forward voltage in the 3.2-3.6V range. Even assuming the higher end of that range 5W = 3.6V x ?A.
Rearranging Power = current x voltage we get power/voltage = current or 5/3.6 = 1.39A. Asuming a perfectly efficient conversion from the 1.2ish volts of the cell to 3.6 that would imply 4.2A out of the cell.
Aye. Right!
1.4A through those hair-fine wires just isn't happening.
The other end of the head isn't all that pretty. A rather poor blob of solder isn't as nice as a spring. It is probably more durable than the bent bit of wire in the MDXL though.
The tailcap is the same as all the other ultra-budget lights. And appears to be interchangeable with all of them.
Single AA configuration
2AA configuration
The beam is a nice colour on my one.
That's the Small Sun "5W", the Powerlight and the DeLight
Better exposed when I remembered to stop the flash from firing.
Of those three, I like the beam colour of the C3 clone best. I like it a lot more than the MDXL. It is very well worth the extra 45 cents over the MDXL and allows all these ultra-budget lights to use 2AA if you want them to. I did rather worry the next patient into the office when he saw me crawling out from under my desk with camera in hand. But then I work in a psychiatric hospital and strange is what the customers are used to - just not usually from the staff....
Since I got carried away taking pics, here's my favourite Lego shot.
Measurements to follow - but at present, because of the versatility, I think this may actually be worth 4x as much as the DeLight. As you may have guessed, I like it.