Hank - the slim AA zoomies GB is selling for $2.29 (gearbest.com slim AA zoom) are most likely hollow pill - I'd say 95% chance. I've bought a lot of these from several sources and all the later ones were hollow pill - only the earlier ones I bought had a solid pill. I think the 1 mode ones I got were all hollow pill. There's also an insane variation of these out there - I got at least 4 different versions. They have different dimensions, different pill/LED assembly, different tailcap assemblies, etc.
I've modded a few of them - both hollow and solid pills. I used copper to make a pill top:
Here's another. I left the hollow pill as is - think I used Arctic thermal epoxy on the SinkPAD:
The copper DTP PCMCB's make a hugh difference - for this light, a Nichia at 5*7135's for 1.75A max, I decided it would probably be ok as-is. I got other single 14500 lights doing over 1,000 lumens, but they got a little more beef to them, but not much .
Further comment and pictures in Solid Pill Vs Hollow Pill, as I think we’ve established nobody at GearBest (or BangGood) actually is allowed to find out what they’re selling.
I sand down the copper stars like crazy... Not as thin as the original, but take it down from 1.55mm to 1.2mm or so (stock ones are ~1.0mm). For SinkPAD I's, it also removes the center indent, but doesn't really matter if not on a shelf.
Would you check whether those are real beamshots for this flashlight?
They look incredible. One very warm, narrow (the cave); one wide, floody, neutral (the wall); one medium-wide, bluish (the parking lot); one (the bicycle picture) with astonishingly crisp edge cutoff on the beam.
Hard to imagine how you get all that variation out of one single light.
.
