Maybe some other player(s) are now manufacturing imitations?
I understand the cell could still be rated 10A, but I cannot endorse this attitude with products. Showing customers a good product and once the deal is made skimping on manufacturing costs and lowering product quality is being dishonest and disrespectful. Do you have problems with cell manufacturers committing to make a consistent cell? If I were you I would warn them of frequent and random bench tests done to their cells on every shipment, to the point of filing lawsuits against offenders. A cell is not mere capacity and amperage ratings, it is much more and this also means how much energy can it deliver and the shape of its discharge curves. Get serious if you would like to be taken seriously.
It may be a good idea to find some small electrical appliance manufacturer(s) willing to use cells like this one in their stuff: hair clippers, electric shavers, etc. It would help with achieving product consistency and manufacturing volumes, I think.
I see that at times you may have troubles sourcing the best cells available.
But the only right way to handle such case is to change the wrapper, clearly notifying the customers that this is a different product.
Silent switch like this one seriously undermines the trust we can put in the Vapcell products that we buy. And in a volatile market like the one you’re in - trust is a huge factor when making purchases.
This is how I “sort of” see the progressive regression of these cells, from the 1st and the best to the latest and worst ones. Hope they already stopped cutting corners because there are no corners left to be cut LoL: Aspire INR18350 1300/1100mAh, KeepPower UH1835P 18350 1200mAh and Vapcell INR18350 1100mAh, and in last position but still what seems a little bit better than Mooch's Vapcell INR18350 retest is the hyperbolically rated and funnily named BestFire IMR18350 1500mAh:
Between top and bottom the difference is huge already. The BestFire's discharge curves are of a different shape, maybe the chemistry and/or the OEM is different.
This is a fascinating (and disappointing) thread. I often use 18350 cells in my Emisar D4 “shorty” tube while jogging at night. Wanting to maximize the potential, I switched from Efest Purple 700mAh to Vapcell 1100mAh. I didn’t notice any differences with max brightness between the two cells (which was no big deal), but I was shocked that the Vapcell seemed to have greatly less capacity. After just a couple of runs, my D4 was blinking a battery warning. This never happened with the Efest Purple. I was so puzzled, that I started checking online and found Mooch’s original FB post on this, then this thread.
Is there any realiable high-drain 18350 cell with 1000mAh anymore? I’ve read that Shockli’s 1150mAh 18350 cell is promising but doesn’t seem to have a distributor.
The KeepPowers appear to be more of a gamble with multiple cells using the same labels.
The Shocklis in the photos on Ali seem to use the new style can, so may also be the same “new” cell.
The difference of the cells in Mooch’s test is not so dramatic really but of course it’s not great to see a performance decline. This is probably beyond the control of VapCell, KeepPower, Shockli etc. They get what they get from the factory.
They are not exactly the same. The top is different. I have Bestfire and Shockli.
I made a small comparison. Shockli, Bestfire 1 500mAh, Bestfire 1 300mAh.
It turns out that a lesser performance of Vapcell 1100mAh compared to my Efect Purple 700mAh, must have been my imagination. I performed a Nor Test on my Liitokala charger and the Vapcells seem to get just shy of the specs they were intended to have.
Vapcell 1100mAh (Battery #1)
Tested at 1034mAh
43mR
4:05 hour test time
charged to 4.19
Vapcell 1100mAh (Battery #2)
Tested at 1048mAh
35mR
4:08 hour test time
charged to 4.20
Efest Purple 700mAh
Tested at 708mAh
59mR
2:47 hour test time
charged to 4.19
I was still quite impressed where the Efest tested after almost 14 months of use. The Vapcells are brand new with only about a week or two use.
Interesting thread. Just wanted to post some info. I had been looking for some additional batteries in case the US/China Tariff dispute raises prices very high. So in another thread someone recommended Illumn as a vendor and I found these higher discharge higher capacity 16340s and 18350s. So I bought a few to test.
The Vapcell (purple wrapper) INR18350 1100 batteries except on the wrapper it says max discharge rate is 9A not 10A. I tested capacity on my Liitokala-500 at a 500Ah rate and the two tested at 1097 and 1115 respectively.
I also tested 2 Keeppower IMR18350 (black label) 1200 with a max discharge rate of 10A again at the 500Ah rate and they two tested at 1156 and 1152 respectively. I think the capacity may have been larger if I tested at the lower 300Ah rate.
I may buy a couple of the Shockli’s from AliExpress but I think they are the same cell as the Keeppower 1200’s.
On a side note I went to the Vapcell site to check the security code on the batteries I bought from Illumn (yes they passed as real) but I was surprised to see on the top of the Vapcell site the words “Approved by Mooch and HKJ”. made me laugh I guess you guys truly are Internationally famous.
No idea what the issue is, I completely avoid news broadcasts or papers of any class. But let me say, at times I wonder why does people expect sheesh to go bad (it's in their minds, mind you). Mind stuff is a challenging discipline, but if you do not want stuff to go bad it is wise to mentally instruct yourselves (mind programming) for stuff to remain good or for an alternative and constructive solution of benefit for everyone.
This still is a too common problem for humanity as a whole. People needs to awaken, imho.
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/BestFire%20IMR18350%201500mAh%20(Black-silver)-Capacity.png)
