came registered mail. opened it up and saw a small hard case and the two fandyfire 18650 packaged nicely inside. the charger isn't bad looking upon first sight. the power adapter has a built in led which shows red as soon as you plug it in. the only gripe i have with the charger is that the protected 18650's are a really tight fit. i mean tight! but they can easily be removed by turning the unit upside down and smacking it into the palm of your hand to get the batteries to fall out. kinda wish i went with unprotected cells so this would be a non issue as well as the solarforce l2i/18650 issue. i have found that if i take the spring off the circuit board and just put a blob of solder to it and put a sleeve around the 18650 to keep it centered then it isn't an issue. i know using this mod i won't be able to use the 3 x aaa's but that doesn't hurt my feelings. i'll leave my other l2i unmodded for a junk drawer light. now if dx would just send me my damn emitters and circuit boards i ordered a week before the batteries and charger, i can finish my project!!!! btw, the fandy/dandy/candy/randy/sandy/ brandy/whatever fires like like they are quality made batteries. the protection boards are perfectly centered and both are the same length. quality control seems good on the cosmetics. i used my dmm and one battery is holding at 3.78 and the other at just over 3.9.
Which item numbers are the things that you ordered? Curious about reviews on some of the DX chargers. I recently ordered this one http://www.dealextreme.com/p/dsd-18650-cr123a-charger-black-936 a few weeks ago and so far it's been great, except it takes FOREVER to charge my 18650s! About 10 hours to be exact, lol.
yep, that's the one i ordered. it just got done topping off the 18650's. they are holding at 4.23/4.24v. took about six hours. the batteries never got hot. i'll take safety over fast any day. it does its job. let's see how those batteries hold up.........
Yep. I had some 18650s that I took out of a laptop pack that I don't use. They were sitting at about 2.5V each, and the charger took 10 hours to get them to 4V before i unplugged it. Next day I plugged it back in and a couple of hours they were at 4.2V and the charger had stopped itself. Can't beat that for $6 :)