I only hesitate to pull the trigger until I see from others how it performs with the bigger lens. I put a 28.5mm aspheric on my L2 (xm-l @ 2.8A) and the focus was perfect but it was dim as hell and not worth crap. The worse thing ever. If this turns out good I'll get one ASAP.
If you have any zoomies at present , cccpull, then take a look at the lenses on them. The lenses on all zoomies are aspheric, that's how they are able to zoom. Moving that lens closer to or away from the emitter simple changes the focus of that lens.
This light fits into the scheme of things together with a dedicated thrower of 1 x 18650 like XR-E R2 of 52mm bezel size, like a Dereelight DBS V3 XR-E R2 aspheric. Or those who have Solarforce MPP-1.
Hotspot is 13cm dia @ 1m dist. Ultrafire U-80 of 42mm bezel is 14cm dia. UF-980L is slightly larger at 14.5-15cm.
This light would not give you spill, perfect on reflective grounds...esp snow or sand, in which the spill would hurt your dark adapted vision and ability to see the hotspot/ID objects. On grass and soil/hilly terrain its probably ok.
How aspherics perform vs big ass reflector lights. You can see the 73mm reflector XM-L doing 80K lux @ 1m, slightly more than a 52mm XR-E R2 aspheric.
I was getting worried about the lack of reflector but this seems quite strong. If anything, I will have to find a way to add in a reflector to make the XML more efficient but it looks good from these pictures!