Please keep in mind there are only a few actual manufacturers of lithium batteries. I have used high drain IMR/INR batteries for vaping for the better part of a decade. If a cell is not sold as Sony, Sanyo, Panasonic, LG… It was most likely made by one of them and did not pass QC and sold off to be re-wrapped with usually grossly exaggerated specs. How would you like to buy a car with exaggerated specs? Would you feel safe if you knew the car didn’t pass the manufacturers QC?
As a vaper you should know these battery manufacturers are trying to distance themselves from vaping. Probably due to liability. In any case you shouldn’t be surprised that cells will be sold under all sorts of names since they do not intend to sell directly to consumers. What you said may exist but it’s far from the truth if you are shopping at the sites we mention. Look at the batteries Eneloop makes without their name on it…
I’ve got plenty of cells from Banggood in the past, and they do seem genuine and test that way too. But, yeah, you could be right that they are not grade A or B cells, and failed inspection for some reason not related to performance.
I’ve bought from Illumn more recently, hoping to get a better guarantee of good quality cells. But, since the manufacturers don’t sell to consumers, I suppose there’s no guarantee of quality from US retailers either.
As consumers, we’re stuck taking the risk ourselves.
I’m going to take back my Banggood recommendation for batteries, at least for their button-top 30Q’s.
I’ve bought a total of 9 of those buttop-top Samsung 30Q cells from Banggood, and now I’ve had 3 of them go bad. Suddenly, their self-discharge will start rising to unacceptable levels. I’ll get noticeable voltage drop every day (up to 50mV) from 3 of the cells, without using them. At best this makes them unusable in multi-cell lights (for a series config). At worst, this might indicate an internal short and make them dangerous.
Flat-top cells I’ve bought from Banggood appear to be fine. It just seems to be an issue with the 30Q’s that have an after-market button added. I’m not sure if they’re getting fakes, or it’s a bad grade of cells. But whatever the reason, make sure to check your button-top 30Qs.
I once tried ordering a couple of batteries from an AliExpress store, and was mildy surprised to receive 2 generic “T6” zoomable flashlights (which had lots of scratches, but I tested them to work). My ordered batteries were placed inside the flashlight (wrapped).
Unfortunately, almost all other AliExpress stores now have stopped shipping bare batteries to my country. The only ones remaining that ship batteries, use DHL or Fedex or other expensive shipping ($50 to $100+ shipping fee) — I have not tried these latter shipping methods, so it’s now been more than 1 year that I have ordered bare batteries from foreign online stores. The only ones that do ship are the ones included in flashlights (eg. the Sofirn flashlight with battery kit).
Maybe I should suggest to the AliExpress stores to try the above technique (place the battery in some cheap disposable electronic device) — this will work for few batteries. Because I think there is still a limit of around 2 flashlights with 2 batteries per shipping (for the postal shipping), The more expensive DHL/Fedex shipping likely have a higher limit on the number of batteries that can be shipped (but still need to be placed inside “containers”).