Nice I got some of these from Banggood back in early November for <5$ each, but now they don’t seem to carry them anymore. I wonder if Banggood may be getting out of batteries due to the shipping restrictions.
This 5000mAh cell is actually manufactured by PLB (INR26650-50A, link). They also have a 5500mAh 26650 available (INR26650-55A, link), which is indeed the best 26650 known in the market (almost 6000mAh with 0.2C discharge!):
Shockli IMR26650 5000mAh is also the INR26650-50A cell from PLB, but some of them are of lower grade, i.e., smaller capacity. HKJ’s Shockli 5000mAh samples are also the ones of smaller capacity. 1 out of my 9 Shockli samples shows less capacity than the usual INR26650-50A (as HKJ’s test), while all the others are identical to the common INR26650-50A.
They still have them although they are to restock on Feb 8 - tomorrow. However and from the actual pictures on GB, they look exactly like the supposedly fake mentioned above…
Mine look genuine but don’t have the exact same marking above the bar code. It reads “+ 3.6V 18.0Wh -” (no F3) and below it differs in the VBxxxxx number. I remember testing them with the my BTC 3100 and they all ranked above 5Ah.
One thing that’s worth mentioning is that the LiitoKala logo is not printed on the wrapping like the other informations but applied as a sticker.
It’s difficult to get that INR26650-55A, but not impossible. Some Chinese sellers, like JAXMAN, do source some of this cell from PLB directly and sell them retail. I have some INR26650-55A and get satisfied with its performance. About 10% more runtime compared to INR26650-50A.
Someone who has cells from the original batch and from the “probably fake” should test them in the same charger with the same parameters, its the only way to know for sure.
Just an fyi, The LK's are a little wider than most, maybe all 26650's and barely fit in the new Lumintop SD26. Some get a little stuck, some don't do too bad. I have the SD26 fully modded with a TA triple driver and the new NarsilTriple v1.3 running a XPL2 V6 3B, getting 8.6A (on an EFEST) out of it and 2,000 lumens.
I have 2 separate batch's of LK 50A's I bought, first original batch from 08/2016 GearBest and a 2nd batch from 12/2016 BangGood, slightly lower capacity, with the "F3" marker as shown above. What I think I'm seeing is variations between batch's, nothing more, but I don't have any missing the 3.6V label line though.