How to distinguish original and fake Trustfire 18650(Flame version)?

Hi guys, after a lot of readings on this forum it seems that Trustfire Flame 18650 2400 mA is pretty good for budget battery.

How ever since I am novice in this kind, is there any suggestion how to distinguish between the original and the fake ? Any specific marks / sign to indicate the original battery?

Thanks in advance.

If you buy the batteries of DX, you the the real.

Here are some marks of the fake:

- smaller flames (take only 1/3 of the lenght)

- bigger letters

Yes, in this moment the language barrier does not help me to explain, but you have to look at the "flames" in the label.

If they are located above the "trustfire" logo, are real. If the flames are located in the right part of the TF logo, are fake.

A photo helps, but in this moment I dont have one.

You might find the pictures in this thread interesting, sugiarto. What happened was, basically, that a few of us jumped on a "too good to be true" deal, which in a completely shocking turn of events turned out to be too good to be true. ;)

Distinguishing between a protected TF 18650 and its unprotected brother is fairly easy: just check for the presence of the PCB near the bottom of the battery; whether it works reliably and as advertised is, of course, an entirely different matter. But realistically, anyone can grab a couple of thousand discarded, old 18650 laptop batteries from a salvage operation and slap a Trustfire label on them. In other words, some fakes may be better than others and there really isn't any foolproof way to tell a fake from the real thing (whatever that may be, because the real TFs may or may not all be coming from the same place - we simply don't know) because the latest batch of fakes may not look like the last batch.

I am with Buwuve, personally. DX sells a ton of these batteries and they're almost a fixture in the "top sellers" list, but I haven't heard anyone report any issues over there, aside from the occasional DOA battery. That's why I tend to just grab a couple of sku.20392 from DX when I need more 18650s. There are other retailers that sell them for less but until I hear something to the contrary, I think it's fairly safe to assume that DX won't send me any fakes.

Edit: Link fixed. 11-9-11

Real ones have a hologram style Trustfire logo (letters shimmering in rainbow colors) while the fakes ones are just plain silver/metallic.

The real ones work, the fakes don't.

Sorry I couln't resist

Unless you want a battery that will double as a grenade in a pinch. In that case, the fake TFs work really well. :D

Thanks guys for all your explanation

Does that link redirect to to a spam competition site on anyone else?

Yes and it needs to be deleted.

Very interesting. Thank you for the heads up. I fixed the link above. Looks like a domain squatter got a hold of our old subdomain. :(