I went through a whole soul searching journey on HDS, and ended up instead spending twice as much by buying a box of parts from Malkoff, haha.
Malkoff benefits from the KISS nature of their lights. I don't think HDS are bad lights (and I'm excitedly awaiting their new AA rotary), but that slick UI means you're going to have a much more complicated product. As complexity increases, reliability decreases.
As an interested buyer, I did notice a very non-zero number of people have to sends lights back to HDS. Going back years, there are people in the HDS thread checking in or reporting their current wait time for a repair.
The most you'll find for Malkoff is, "I did something stupid and broke my thing, and I can't believe Gene took care of me."
For me, Malkoff really is the top dog in quality, dependability, and ruggedness. Nothing is even close. Not the bleeding edge of max lumens, candela, or runtime, but no slouches, either. My Malkoffs don't have the "on paper" hotrod specs of some of my novelty lights from China, but it's shocking how little difference there is in actual, real world use, and those novelty lights are significantly less durable. I think Zebralight is a reasonable balance, and I'll spare you the details, but dealing with Zebralight Customer Service was one of the worst experiences I've ever had with any company. Gene? Legendary service.
All things considered, I think Malkoff is unbelievably cheap. The level of quality and service you get for the price boggles my mind. Chinese companies ship out a not-as-nice product for half the price, with ZERO support. And, there's nothing wrong with that, per se. I buy plenty of <$20 AA lights from Convoy, understanding there's a decent chance a problem will simply cost way more than the light is worth, JUST to ship it there and back. I like Simon, and think he offers an amazing value, and I've had great support from him, but there's only so much room to wiggle on a <$20 product.
I do have to agree with you on HDS. A $300+ light should be perfect. Sure, a Malkoff MDC with the CR123A body isn't nearly as versatile as an HDS, nor does it have the slick UI, but you can get 3 modes, dead nuts reliability, and it will ship out perfect....For $135!? I've got similarly sized Chinese LEGO lights that cost about half of that, but are about 1/3 of the quality, and people are spending HDS prices for decorative titanium lights with so-so quality and UI's. My repeated criticism for HDS is they're neither fish nor fowl; they're not the absolute most simple and reliable, but they're also not the most elegent, perfect shelf queens. So, you're paying shelf queen prices for novelty reliability.
And, again, I say this as someone with money sitting aside for an AA rotary, hahahaha. I can like a product without being totally delusional about what I'm getting.
