Hi, long time lurker here and please forgive me if this has been covered before and if it has, I couldn’t find it through the search function.
Now I’ve noticed that there’s a stickied thread with a list of laptop brands along with the corresponding cells found inside. However, there doesn’t seem to be a thread that discusses the capacity retention of certain brands.
What we’ve already established is that Panasonic, LG, and Samsung cells are typically the best but there hasn’t been anyone who has organized their findings in an excel sheet after hundreds upon hundreds or 18650 tests.
Here is the youtube video showing a spreadsheet of the best and worst cells after two discharge tests and a 30 day voltage retention test. The guy in the video tests what appears to be hundreds of 18650 batteries pulled from busted laptop batteries to be used as part of his new battery pack for his Nissan Leaf.
Here’s the link:
“Complete 18650 data video credit goes to youtuber ”Leaf Xpack[]
It appears that Sanyo were the worst performing cells by far while the Panasonics and Samsungs reined supreme. This is based strictly on the cell’s ability to maintain it’s original capacity. The guy in the video first recharges the batteries to full and puts them on a 1A discharge, records the mAH, recharges to full, let’s them sit in a box for 30 days, discharges them again at 2A only if the voltage dropped no more than 0.04v. His spreadsheets are quite organized and his test methods appear to be proper.
Now we just need to find out which packs contain Sanyo cells so we can avoid them.