My 477nm streamlight build also laughs at that snobbish statement about "respectable hosts". A stunning diode in a host that by default took a single AAA battery (now a 10440 battery). 75mW of gorgeous sky blue almost teal light from a nice but inexpensive 98mm x 15mm package. And I'm certainly not the only one that likes it as I have turned down unsolicited offers to buy it for well above what I paid for the entire build. Cheap hosts can be some of the best, they leave room in the budget for things like nice diodes and not having to live the famous mac 'n cheese diet.
At the end of the day, those coherent photons don't really care what contraption held the components in place. They exist because a diode got power that met it's specifications while bieng kept within it's operating temperature range. I won't build in an ugly (to me) host, but I won't turn away a cheap one if I like the way it looks. Just make sure you can find an equivalent size quality Lithium battery from a company with a good reputation such as efest.