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.