It’s explained here by Richard from Mountain Electronics, post #72: New Noctigon M43 - no thermal paste & other issues...
Oh, i see… but in my opinion in a light from this price range this is unacceptable, anyways although the led board and the shelf are pretty much as flat as it gets for a light i’ve added AC MX-4 when i assembled the light back, i don’t know if its going to improve the light but i am sure it wont make it worse.
And also somewhere was a test made by Texas_Ace which shows that pressure gives more influence than thermal grease existing.
That is true, but same amount of pressure that it was before plus right amount of thermal paste should not make the things worse.
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/44953， Here is Texas_Ace’s test conclusion,
So what is the end result?
Apply thermal paste in your flashlights but worry more about the clamping force of the mcpcb to the pill.
Make sure to only apply a thin layer of thermal paste, too much is just as bad or worse then too little. plus it is messy.
It won’t be making any changes to my LED test procedures. Thermal paste is a pain to work with and has less then a 1% effect on the final numbers in my test rig with lots of clamping force.
There is difference between “no thermal paste” and “which type of thermal paste and how to apply it”.
Here is the comparison photo of the one with and without the thermal paste, you may find it hard to notice
if there is thermal paste there without the comparison photo. 
Actually the one we used is a kind of dry type, very thin layer on the pill, so that it will not be squeezed from
the holes of the MCPCB, and mess up the top surface, the first glace will give you the impression that there is no thermal on the pill which is not true.
The MCPCB is mirror polished, which I think the clamp force to make it tightly contact with the pill is more important.
Hank isn’t a typical clueless businessman trying to cut corners. I may give him crap sometimes, but he knows what he’s doing. The Meteor is carefully designed and its build is top-notch.
Man I still love the Meteor so much… 
My apologies then, mine did had that thin layer of the unknown grease but i thought that maybe that is only some oil left from machining the host.
Anyways my point was not to bash someones work or product its just i was used to see more standard thermal paste in there, some white/silver stuff, to this day i haven’t seen something similar to the one in the meteor.
I love the light, i tend to use it whenever i can and sometimes even tho moonlight level from AAA light will do the job i still take out the meteor just because it is one of my favorite lights at the moment.
It’s one of my 4 favorites too. I have the gold one the stone white and 2 black ones all different tints. My wife just doesn’t understand why I have to turn all 4 of them on at the same time in turbo. Inside the house. When the light switch is right there on the wall. Too bad they won’t use an electroless nickel coating. You wouldn’t need thermal grease because it has excellent conductive properties, you would never need to lube the threads because of its teflon-like properties, and it adds negligible thickness as a coating.
and i thought I’m the crazy one with 3. I don’t feel as bad now!
The only improvement on this light would be a charging circuit in the tail… :innocent:
I’ll agree with that
Pertaining to the white model only that just came back in stock, does it compare in quality to the original batch or the more recent batches?
^ One can also wonder (as well as the black/dark grey variant) whether it is of the modified machining design, or the original design. Mountain Electronics shows the modified design, whereas Intl-Outdoor shows (changed back to) the original design.
OK, I admit I actually read manuals. In it there is an error code shown by the lit button to tell us if water is under the button. Then the manual says to dry it but without instructions on how to do that.
How does one dry the button?
My guess would be to unscrew the red plastic ring to start, but that’s as far as I can even guess. How close am I? What else has to happen?
BTW, really nice light. A few gripes but the biggest is about no provision for slung carry. A chintzy wrist lanyard doesn’t cut the mustard for having both hands free at night.
Gotta love the size and output and mode 3 programming.
Actually this problem can not happen due to the proper construction design, the button area is glued, there is no way that the water can go inside.
Thanks. Never having to do it is certainly much easier. It also means I can take it out into the rain with no fear. I wasn’t going to.
I also had a heck of a time trying to do the “click+ slow click” to enter into output 2 in Mode 3. Then I discovered that a “slow click” actually means “click and hold it”. Now I can get that output any time I want. OK, the actual sequence is “click + click and hold”. The clicks can actually be done fairly rapidly and not slowly at all; just hold the second click.
Please, please, please bring back the tan/sand colored variant. I need one or two badly!