Review: Triple XTAR 18700 roundup - stress performance test

Naw - I know how long they are. That's what I like about them; will fit in every 18650 light I have except maybe the L2i.

Foy

A sheet of 80gsm (grams per square meter - approximately 24lb in US units) paper is around 0.125mm thick. Works fine as an insulator.

Thanks fo the info. However, Old managed to measure pretty much anything and did a nice job on those. I just added my experience with a different driver perhaps. I have 2 2400mAh half a year already and im pleased so far.

If those would not exist i would be still buying Hi-max 2600mAh. Great cell but i put much more confidence in these.

Thank you very much for your great job Gregor.

Thanks for the review .

Another great review as usual. Thanks Budgeteer!

Hi Budgeteer! Great review, it's going frontpage and sticky.

The Sanyo-inside 2600mah 18700 cells are my first and only Li-Ion cells. So far they fit well in the three compatible lights that I own: Solarforce Skyline II, MRV Clone, and Tank007 TK-737 (which is quite a short light).

I'm very happy with the runtime on these cells. However, there is something that concerns me, it's also an area where I would like to see a bit of input from the experts in their reviews... These are supposedly protected cells. However, as far as I can tell, I haven't been able to get the protection circuit to trip. I am a bit of an oddball, I like to run batteries flat-dead until I squeeze out every last joule of energy. I know that this isn't good for Li-Ion cells. And that is supposedly what the protection circuit should do- prevent the voltage from dropping too low and thus preventing a dangerous internal chemical state. However, I sometimes leave lights running and then forget about them, and other lights (like the Skyline II) have parasitic drain from their digital switch. But with these XTAR / Sanyo 18700s, my lights happily run from fully charged all the way down to a faint glimmer without the protection circuit forcefully intervening and breaking the circuit. Seems like it just plain doesn't work. The only exception was with the Skyline II, but I imagine the shutoff logic is programmed into the flashlight, not the battery. Could anybody offer more insight about what we should expect from a good protection circuit? Thanks!

Thank you all. It's hard to do a review when there was already nice job done by our Paganini of batteries Old. I opted for a stress test instead as i think it matters nowadays. High current emitters are pretty standard nowadays so it did make sense. Safety is a major concern to many regarding li-ion technology so i wanted to include that as well. I hardly ever discharge batteries till the potection kicks in but since it's a good safety feature that hardly anyone ever test i opted to include it. Also the quality of wrapping can make a difference. During use and heavy swapping the wrapper can be damaged so i think this is important for a quality product. I do like to sell/give reliable flashlights and equipment. I found these batteries along with chargers the best regarding price/performance/reliability so far. Some may call my assessment premature as these were not tested extensively. I agree, but time will tell if there are any quirks involved. Untill then this have to do. There are just a few really good batteries for decent price around. These are amongst the best if not the best in their price range. It seems XTAR is pretty confident in their product lineup to send generous amounts of samples to review. Probably they would never do that if the products were mediocre.

Yesterday i left (again) a XTAR 18700 2400mAh in the WP2 charger overnight. I'm getting sloppy! I would never do that with my dust collecting DX random charger and always babysitted it in a fireproof bucket. This XTAR chargers have lowered my distrust to li-ion safety quite alot. Can't say it's a good thing... one should always respect potentially dangerous technology. I have to pay more attention in future...

Not much but this might help.

Depending on load the battery voltage lowers to some extent. In my heavy discharge test the protection kicked at 2.75 v when under use. If tested open circuit this battery will show around 3V. The light output with a cell in that range should be pretty low by then. There is a problem with digital switches tho. The parasitic drains that those switched put on a battery often drain the battery to 2.75V and when the PCB shuts the cell off ther might be some heavy issues to charge the battery again. Voltage will not be present as the battery sits at 2.75V or a tiny bit below (DMM wil show 0V). To overcome this only the MP1 charger can wake such battery from the "dead". Others do not wish to charge those. It's best to take care when using flashlights with parasitic drain in off position. So far protection PCB's worked for me when intentionally or casually happened to trigger.

Protection PCBs for Li-Ion cells will not trigger if the current draw is low.

When i tested the XTAR D01 (which have a parasitic drain for a xxmA or so in "standby") the battery i used (xtar 2400mAh) the pcb triggered at that low drain in a few days needed to discharge the cell.

The battery voltage shown on DMM was 0! After inserting it for 10 seconds in the MP1 the cell reported 3,0xV already and happily kept on charging in every charger. I assume the protection works. Please correct me if you know more on subject.

XTAR 18700 Rechargeable Protected battery 2600 mAh Sanyo's aren't available on the retail site (http://www.qualitychinagoods.com) that I could find. So they must be purchased on the wholesale site which charges additional shipping. Pricing 5 packs of these (10 batteries total) with shipping in USD came to a total of:
Sub-Total: $52.50
Percent Rate (Total): $15.75
Total: $68.25
So that’s $6.83 each or $13.65 a pair delivered to the US. Has anyone been able to find a better deal on these? I'm not complaining about the price... just wondering.

Also of interest: does anyone know what light would accept a 14650?

The more testing the better

There were a bunch of incan and Osram multi-die mods around that used them. Fivemega at CPF makes, or made battery holders and bored bodies for them.

Wonderful review! Thank you! Last an hour at 2.8? Not bad.

Any U.S. supplier got these?

Wonder if they'll sink 4A for ~30 min. for my triples?

Rich

I just got my XTAR 2600mAh 18700's this week, so I am reading this review for the first time. If the light was blinking, that is the driver's battery protection kicking in. I don't think the battery PCB would blink; it would just turn off.

I put one of my XTAR batteries on my Turnigy charger, discharging at 1A and got 2472mAh down to 3.0V under load. When I charged the battery, I found out that the Turnigy is set to stop charging after it puts 2600mAh in the battery. It also has a timeout feature that I've pushed to over 2 hours. Usually it stops when the battery is full.

Blinking it is a indirect "feature" of the PCB. Under heavy load the voltage drops, then the pcb cut's off, voltage raise above the treshold (when there is no load) then repeats. That's the magic of the blinking is all about.

I may have to test that with an unprotected cell. Usually when the protection triggers, it doesn't get reset unless you put current through it externally like in a charger. I think it's the driver that is making the light flash, though I can see what you are saying about it getting in a loop.