Received my NW FT03 today. It was pre-ordered via the Banggood app on March 21, so I hope that those that ordered earlier have received their lights by now.
Everything seems okay so far, though I have forgotten if others have had the same rattle of the plastic disk protecting the battery side of the driver. It’s unclear to me why this piece doesn’t clamp down when the driver ring is tightened, but it doesn’t. If your rattles and you want to stop it, this disk can simply be removed entirely, though it may be offering some protection from a a short-circuit if a narrow, non-adapted, button-top cell were somehow able to get around the spring. That scenario seems unlikely.
I took the light mostly apart, but have not de-soldered the MCPCB and may not do so right away as I’m a bit busy this week. I do want to check the existing contact and improve the heat transfer, but it’s a very tight place to work and my high-wattage iron has a tip that won’t melt hot butter; I plan to grind my existing tip down before attempting this job. Yes, I’ve done this with other irons and it gives at least temporary improvement depending on how badly the underlying metal corrodes.
The lens-bezel o-ring is small and wants to pop out of its channel in the bezel. My o-ring seemed to be installed fine from the factory, but it was tedious to keep in place while the bezel was being tightened. You won’t want to do this often and it seems obvious that this o-ring is not quite large enough for the job.
I haven’t used the light in the dark, but I installed a new LiitoKala Lii-50A 26650 5000mAh cell and tested the driver and beam on the walls of my dark room. Everything seemed to work fine and the emitter seems well-centered even after my disassembly, though I find that the “centering” ring is pretty poor and primarily serves to prevent the reflector from touching the emitter wires.
The beam tint is not objectionable at any power level, but bear in mind that I don’t really care about tint in a cheap thrower. Tint does improve at higher output levels, as we expect. It is NW, though, and cannot be confused for CW.
As I have no facilities to take measurements of any relevance, this is about all I can say so far. I am disappointed that a number of people received defective lights and that Banggood has made it rather difficult for some receive a full replacement, but I can report that my light seems to be made acceptably well.
. There are no excuses for shipping lights so far out of order and I’m concerned about whether there’s been some mistake regarding your light or shipment.
. My BLF A6 (Astrolux) and new FT03 simply don’t offer that kind of satisfaction and I do miss it. One must be careful with the threads on these lights and both sound and feel quite cheap 
. It’s still a good tradeoff, though.
