i was about to post about this, but wanted to verify some of my nymbers first. anyway, my first impression is that this is not much better.
test setup: an astec emerson 5v supply feeding a flexmod p3, a multimeter wried in series and the diode in a dave mount and an optima lens. power went up in 20ma increments. i have no 826 to test against, so i run my comparison back to back with an 815 again with the same setup and an optima lens.
i run it just for a while at 600ma and i got 340mw out the business end using an optima lens.
quite a different number with what you are getting Frank, but we don't use the same power meter, so an ammount of delta could be attributed to this. i also know for a fact that my uncalibrated power meter can be up to 15% "conservative" in the red wavelengths, so my numbers are more usefull as relative references.
results are nothing to write home about. beam properties are exactly the same, lasing threshold is pretty close (78ma vs 85ma), i run the 815 only up to 440ma, and i only did three runs with the 836 at 485ma, 555ma and 600ma. results below.
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the only way this diode could surprise us is headroom. but i will not kill one yet. besides, if i feed it 555mw and get 327mW and then go to 600ma just to get 335mW, is a good indication for me that there is not much headroom either