To each his own Mortuus
There's some of us who love pens and others that can't stand them for the reasons you state. I find the HL looks very plain and honestly don't like the big plastic bottom on either the HL or PL. The button looks very cheap to me in comparison to the rest of the build.
Honestly never heard someone who owned both the HL and PL say they like the HL better thus my comment.
I think they are all well built but not for anyone looking to disassemble. Good luck taking one apart if there's a problem. I had an issue with an HL I purchased in a GB and ended up having to hacksaw it apart. I'm not really saying this is good or bad but just is. Purchased another one and the funny thing is I didn't even think of seeing if I could have gotten it in a PL (duh on me). Will say that for lower powered units the PL feels like a huge overkill in comparison to the HL. I guess I think it would be nicer if the HL looked like a smaller PL lol.
Anyways, I'm glad we are all different so we can all contribute. Looks like you are going to hit 1000 posts soon