They arrived today and I took a quick check of the voltage, battery "A" was at 3.8 and battery "B" was at 3.7. Charged them for 2 1/2 hours using the included charger and ended up with 4.2v for "A" and 4.1 for "B" (hot off the charger).
I went ahead and let them sit for 5 hours and a re-check shows 4.05v for "A" and 3.98v for "B".
Decided to run them both for 1/2 hour
Battery "A" in my Solarforce XPG starting voltage 4.05 ending 3.72
Battery "B" in my Skyline 1 starting volatage 3.98 ending 3.8.
What are your thoughts on the quality of the batteries based on the above. Also and more importantly how do I move forward with these batteries as far as a break-in period? Should I place them back on the charger or should I go ahead and run them down???
That charger is far from decent quality if it is the same as DX sells (i did read all of the chargers reviews). Most of them (probably all) don't do CC/CV. And by what you said the cells are surely bad. For one they should not even be hot off charge. The self discharge is awful. It seems they were stored at ver low voltage for quite some time...
The capacity i would guees also be low to support my educated guessing. And finally those cells are not playing nice with moderate discharge current. Best used for low drain devices. My 2 cents.
My advice would be to top them and do a discharge test in some light not drawing more than 1A. If you get results around 1100mAh by calculating the outcome... dispose them and ask for a refund. The charger is probably ok, the cells are not.
Thanks for the welcome and responses. I may have been a little mis-leading when I said "hot off the charger". The batteries were actually still a room temperature after the 2 1/2 hour charge. What I should have said is that I checked the voltage 5 seconds after removing them from the charger.
So after sitting overnight here is where they stand
Battery "A" is up to 3.86v from 3.72
Battery "B" is up to 3.87v from 3.8
I think I will go ahead and put them back on the charger for maybe 4 hours?. These batteries appear to have the protection circuit on the bottom so I should not have an issue with overcharging correct?