There are Eneloops and some other high quality LSD cells.
Eneloops will last over a decade, which is longer than a Li-Ion will last.
But if you care about output, Li-Ion is the way to go. 
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Also, did you forget that CR123s exist?? I know people that won’t run anything else in their WMLs and I can’t say I disagree with their thinking behind it
Did YOU forget that those are lithium primaries, not alkalines?
As for your citation crap, if you are unaware of the difference in performance between alkaline and lithium ion batteries, feel free to learn. There are lots of runtime charts out there for dual fuel AA alkaline/14500 lights that will show you exactly that.
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Just get some lithium primaries, or Fenix makes althe ARB-L14-2200U which is a 1.5v usb-c rechargable AA. Li-ion 14500 lights that are halfway decent are still way overpowered for the small hosts and heat up way too fast (Sofirn Sp10v3, even the Skilhunt E2A and M150).
To be fair, there were the TK4A/TN4A/SPsomething, tomato-paste-can lights, that took 4 AAs and put out close to 1000 lemons on high.
And there was The Cave Man… EA8?.. that took 4 or 8 AAs (2 banks or 4 in parallel) with respectable output, too.
Oldies but goodies, imagine they’re all discontinued by now.
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Yeah, multi-AA flashlights can provide decent output.
That’s one way to go if someone doesn’t like Li-Ion cells, though they can get more output in a smaller package with Li-Ion cells. 
True. Olight isn’t what they used to be. Now they’re an everypersons flashlight company and are focusing on market trends, e.g. what consumers want and are asking for. In today’s economy that’s important since your product lines need to be scalable and adaptable to market trends, purchasing habits, and your competition. Olight functions in a vertical market, like Fenix, NEXTORCH, nitecore, and others so they need diverse product lines unlike Sofirn or Wurkkos or Convoy that predominantly make only flashlights. To be competitive is key and that means giving customers what they want. Apparently they don’t mind proprietary batteries or unswappable LEDs. Incorporating those features are extra production steps and cost. Also added liability which is also expensive to prevent from people setting things on fire or burning themselves. Lawsuits and indemnity payouts are no fun and not worth upsetting handfuls of enthusiasts who want to use their own batteries or swappable leds. Personally, and having reviewed several Olights, i think theyve done very well as-is like the X4, Warrior 3S or the Nano. They don’t need to be modded. If you want that, there’s ons of other options to explore (Wurkkos, Jetbeam Convoy, Skilhunt, Acebeam, etc).
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The person you were replying to never specified that they only use alkalines, that’s was your arbitrary choice to deceptively undersell the performance of lights using cells other than 3.7 li-ion chemistry
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What was deceptive about it? Li-ion tremendously outperforms alkaline. I doubt that you’ll find many flashlight enthusiasts that would say otherwise.
I exclusively use NiMH batteries, and never use the brightest modes of my flashlights - therefore your metrics for performance isn’t relevant to my use cases.
Not everyone needs a Li-Ion torch which can blast with the power of six million Suns.
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Yes… but facts are facts…
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Why? Are you trapped in 2005?
Well, the vast majority of people do, so using this to argue ‘performance doesn’t matter’ isn’t relevant to almost everybody’s use case.
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I rarely use the highest mode on my flashlights because that causes them to overheat.
I usually use the second-highest mode, but I use Li-Ion flashlights because they’re so much brighter for their size.
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Regardless of any other consideration, Lithium Ion cells have a far higher energy density than NiMH cells do.
If someone is highly invested in NiMH, that is fine. Use what you have and like. But there simply is no way that it can be argued that NiMH is a superior chemistry for a power source.
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Nicely put! 
There are plenty of people here that use lithium primary lights when outdoors because temps can easily dip to -20C or lower for nearly a third of the year. They would never consider running alkalines because they know the many ways in which they are awful.
Comparing only alkaline performance to li-ion is completely arbitrary and not at all representative of what anyone with even the slightest working knowledge is using.
Output numbers on a graph are also not at all indicative of real-world practical brightness. 20% max output != 20% perceived brightness.
??
Sure there are: cycle life, self-discharge rate, charging safety, operational temp range, etc…
Reminder, this is the initial claim that is apparently getting such strong pushback here:
Is that actually being disputed here on BLF lmao
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When you say AA or AAA batteries, it implies alkaline unless you mention that you’re referring to NIMH/Eneloop, or lithium primaries.
You yourself just said alkalines are awful in many ways. Hence the pushback…why are you surprised?
There are still more than 9x more zinc-carbon batteries produced yearly than alkaline, so clearly when someone talks about say, a AA Zebralight, HDS, etc. that must be the cell chemistry they mean right? 
If you asked your wife or husband to pick you up some AA batteries while he/she is at Wal*mart tonight, what percentage of them will come back with zinc-carbon AAs?
There’d be the same chance of that happening as asking them to pick out my next light
But the question has a faulty premise anyway, I don’t live in a country where the latter are sold in big box stores. Turns out that a lot of people do though, so it might be worthwhile to ask them