So I just bought the one from Shiningbeam. My first order with them. I came close to getting one of their XP-G LED's but I already have one coming from KD plus there is a possible CPF group buy from Cutter for what could possibly be a more neutral tint.
That shiningbeam driver looks interesting. No flashing modes and not expensive either. Doubt there's room in a P60 driver to stack two of those to make a real 2.8A driver which would be interesting with MC-E or P7 emitters. Heatsinking might be a problem though.
Got the 502B today. I will write up a full review once I have a chance to test it out. My first impressions are good. The 502B looks good, came lubed already (too much, I'll wipe it all off and do it over), the clip seems strong, and the switch is firm, but the threads are kind of rough. The throat is way bigger than the drop-in so I don't see how it can have hardly any heat sinking. The 504B was a better fit but I put some pieces of aluminum cut out of a soda can to get it tight. I would need too many layers to do that here. I might coil up some thick copper wire and put that down there.
The drop-in is a single mode XP-G and says Super Bright R5 on it. It seems quite bright, but I haven't run it for very long. On a 18650 at 4.08V, I measured a draw of 1.2A at the tail, which seems reasonable. People have reported problems with the 5-mode driver burning up, so the 1-mode seems the way to go for now. I also got a multi-mode driver that I will put in eventually. The LED is on a white Cree board and seems securely fastened to the pill. I haven't taken the pill apart to look at the driver.
Well, here's a sneak peak. It is impressive. I had put a different driver in the 504B, but I partially burned it out doing some testing when I accidentally connected the battery the wrong way. So I have put the original driver back in for now.The 502B with the XP-G R5 is on the left and the 504B with the XR-E R2 is on the right. With freshly charged batteries, the XP-G is drawing 1.49A and the XR-E is drawing 1.18A. So not only does the LED put out more light, it is also being driven harder. It is probably close to 300 lumens.
XP-G on the left, XR-E on the right at 1/25th second:
at 1/200th second
at 1/1600th second. The P60 reflector does a nice job of focusing the hotspot, but you can see it is still bigger and it also seems more intense.
It might be a couple of days before I get outdoor shots for a complete review. My test range is badly overgrown with the fine spring weather. I will probably do some battery life tests tomorrow and get some pictures of the light and then add the outdoor shots this weekend.
