Just go a Salvo 12W led, the light seems very well built and the battery canister is very compact and nicely designed.
since it comes precharged I decided to use it on an exploration dive here (Dominican Republic) to a recently discovered cave yesterday.
Now I usually dive a 10W HID and I have had bulbs burn and recently in the middle of a dive the bulb popped out of the socket! I am sick of the unreliable nature of HID's so I decided to give LED's a chance. Right form the beginning of the dive I could tell this light was more or less as bright as my 10W HID, granted the hotspot is a bit more difuse but not by allot. We were in an unexplored cave with kind of tight sidemount passages so I could not really tell the projection of the light until we found a very big tunnel that keeps going and stays big and wide for a while, here the light projected just as good as a 10W HID it has a bit wider beam but lights up just as much. As for signaling, as I said the hotspot is a bit wider but not by allot, if you are signaling your buddy with this light and he fails to see you, he is either way too far away or not paying any attention to your signals.
When I got back home I tried the HID side by side with the Salvo LED in the dark, the beam on the HID was a bit tighter but the LED lit up just as much and seemed to have a whiter color. I think that the performance of the LED is on par with the HID, but if LED's are as reliable as people say they are then in my opinion it's a no brainer.