This guy found his UltFire 3000mAh to have in fact 887mAh.
But that is actually quite irrelevant because the max discharge the Pro Peak Prodigy 2 can do is 1Amp, so at 3Amps like what we all need the cells should not do more than 400mAh. That is assuming the discharging was done at 1A, maybe was done at 0.5A. In any case 1A is pretty irrelevant in the flashlight world.
Lower in the comments you can read (even after the guys shows how bad they are)
"i am going to buy a new battery for my flashlight ,i find a pair cheap battery on ebay ,ultrafire brc18650 2 for $3.10 ,should i buy it or not ?
This is but one of the many reasons I NEVER buy anything but genuine Panasonic or AW batteries (mostly AW) from reliable, easy to reach vendors I have dealt with for many years. Yeah, they cost more but I could care less. They always meet spec and I never have any problems with them. It’s bad enough that most here buy the very cheapest lights available (strike one), the cheapest batteries available (strike two) and then go on to complain that they got screwed (strike three). DUH! What in the world did you expect? You fell for the false advertising, the unrealistic pricing and ignored the countless battery reviews. No sympathy here. Think of all the poor people buying and using this junk that never even realize they’ve been had. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
On the bright side (pun intended), maybe that great warranty that came with that unbelievably great deal on those crappy batteries and lights will save the day. You KNOW that’s not gonna happen. Heck, most of that stuff isn’t even worth the shipping to and from wherever it came from.
Let me know how those new $20 car tires worked out for you. Seems legit, eh?
All that being said, I too occasionally buy some junk to play with in an attempt to make them better/brighter (lights - never batteries) and when it all goes south, which is usually the case, I chalk it up to cheap entertainment. Sort of like panning for gold. Lots and lots of work for little to no return.
Amazing photos. Crazy the market that creates this crap.
If anything, it’s a reason to own a hobby charger. Run them down and fill them back up. You’ll know then what you’ve really bought before loading the Kung full of grenades.
Since these ads showed up in my ebay account I will post the stats. The popularity of these cells is just incredible and the capacity claim has nothing to do with reality. I bet they don't have 2000mAh at 1Amp discharge.
The only thing we can do is try to inform the general public. As long as the demand for these exaggerated capacity cells are available the unaware public will by them. The only defense against this china marketing is being well informed. If everyone knew how crappy and dangerous they are, they would simply disappear from the market. This thread is definitely a step in the right direction.
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Posting all these pictures will help and hopefully move up to the top of google’s search engine.
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Another battery surprise story. My 14500 battery explosion, with pictures
Thanks a lot gords1001 , that’s about all we can do to help. I suppose the market for these type cells is greater in the vaping market than anywhere else. If we could all pitch in I’am sure we could make a dent in the numbers sold.
Yeah thanks gords1001. And moderator007 yeah that is all we can do.
The rather weird part is you can s ee those German sellers sell a lot of them. To most of the emerging markets and even developed countries the fact that a German seller offers those cells means everything is correct and tested, but that is just and old cliche. That is also why some of those companies even try to use German sounding names like Heider to sell ultra cheap flashlights. So what I am trying to say that US and German sellers selling thousands of these cells is actually a guarantee for many people to buy from local sellers anywhere in the world UltraFire cells.
I have cut open a few. As above but bring battery down to 0 volts as you are going to destroy it, no? To cut into a charged or partially charged cell could get interesting.
The cells I cut were the brown and gold wrapped “protected 4000 ma” batteries. Well, it did say so on the label! Reviewers on Amazon give this cr@p 5 stars?
Hopefully some slick lawyer could nail Amazon then it could start to roll down hill on the importers to stem the flow >)
You’d have to search for a while, but there have been several reported incidents of ultrafire “BRC” cells (in all of their various iterations & colors) exploding, leaking, overheating while charging, and reporting some of the lowest capacities of any “new” 18650 we’ve ever seen. This one certainly stoops to new lows. Regardless of which version BRC you might find or how new they might appear, please do not use them and recycle them immediately. That can probably be said of most Chinese lithium cells… pure garbage sold to the unsuspecting.
I notice that 18650s are beginning to appear in other products such as this radio: Tecsun pl-880
I’m sure the radio community will receive the 18650(kHz) message.
When I first started “playing around” with cree lights I bought some grey/blue trust~ultrafire 18650’s as I didn’t know any better back then. It’s only when I got myself some lights with some serious firepower that I realized that those **fires were junk. These days I’m more picky about the cells I use. I would also avoid any super-cheap deals on batteries as well. More likely than not they’ve been pulled out of old laptops and re-labeled.
I saw my first 18650 battery in the Tomtom Go 710-910 series of GPS units which came out around 2007. I have seen some units recently with what appear to still have their original battery and it still holds a charge to some extent. Changing that battery requires patience and some skill.