Don’t get me wrong, I find that the testing of the longevity of rechargeable batteries to be quite useful. But for me, I find that knowing what kind of tailcap readings people have gotten with batteries as opposed to others for comparable purposes to be quite useful. Isn’t it important to know what kind of juice a battery will allow to he put out?
that is quite subjective because of the cell health, led vf and flashlight resistance.. it's better to have a driver and good high capacity cells (like hi-max, panasonic, sanyo..)
Understood… everything has its variable conditions. I just enjoy number and statistics, which I feel can be made from these readings that can be done with as much information as possible. For instance: used type x battery charged with type y charger to z volts. Recorded w amps using flashlight b that uses…etc.
What your talking about is two totally different tests.
A Tailcap amp reading means nothing about the cell and is all about the lights driver, Mostly unless you have a really junky battery. Most flashlights on the market are at 3 amps and below and iirc i never seen a battery that cant handle 3 amps for the few seconds a tail cap reading takes.
Testing cells imo falls more into finding the most bang for the buck. And looking at how long it can hold a voltage so the driver can run at its peak output. And in the case of direct drive drivers, Capacity will tell you how long before the light starts having a noticeable dimming and how long you can safely run the light.
But i do agree that Tailcap readings are important, A low one equals less lumens and longer runtimes.
Cell testing basically tells you how long you can run a light and how hard at its peak performance.
I feel that anyone doing a light review should post tail cap amp reading as an important set of specs same as with testing a car in "Car and Driver" magazine posts a cars engine specs, horspower and 1/4 mile times.
Also, Cell testing can mean nothing when you put 1 or 2 cells in a well regulated light as the driver takes over the whole control of what the cell puts out. And in the case of 2 cell lights you may as well throw cell testing out the door also. Its more of a "Seat of the pants" testing at that point for cell performance.
So as janko.hrasko said everything is subjective and looking at cell testing is just one tiny part of the equation. But the more you get into high power, High amp draw lights a very strong cell is a must and cell testing can be invaluable at those times. Or you can just throw and IMR cell in the light and forget all that. lol
But that is a function of the driver. A true constant power driver wouldn’t care about the curve, only the watt-hours the cell is capable of. So Cell A in the graph would give nearly identical output to cell B. They have the SAME capacity when measure in watt-hours, its just that Ah alone doesn’t tell the whole story.