My dad has discovered the wide world of cheap Chinese crap on the internet. China makes plenty of good stuff these days, the stuff my dad buys just isn’t it. He continues to buy the worst of the worst zoomies and awful “tactical” lights. Oh well, it’s his money and if he wants to pay for 10,000K tint LEDs that make you wish you were back in the dark when you turn them on then that’s his business.
The batteries he gets with them on the other hand worry me. No name or **fire batteries with very obviously fake performance claims, and questionable chargers to go with them. I’m usually a safety third kind of guy myself, but I don’t think Lithium batteries are a place to cut corners.
I plan on getting him a decent charger and rounding up all the crappy batteries he has laying around and replacing them. Please recommend cheap protected 18650s. He doesn’t need much in the way of performance as the lights he has don’t pull much current, and he doesn’t use them enough to notice the capacity differences. Safety, availability, and affordability is the key here.
What country are you in? International shipping for li-ion isn’t the best. I will assume the US. Here is a list of all the protected 18650s for sale from trustworthy vendors in the US. The MJ1 at Illumn is pretty good.
Haha, that’s about right! I think his are only 10,000 mAh though…
Thank you! I am in the US. Those MJ1s would be perfect, I use the unprotected ones in some of my lights. I didn’t realize they had a protected version.
I’ll be honest, the first batteries I got where 2 protected Panasonic NCR18650B, which have around 3350mAh capacity .
I bought them from an AliExpress reliable store. Although there are probably better and more recent options, in case you want good and reliable cells, check those. Always from reliable sources, of course
I’m curious about the Panasonic NCR18650B’s, these are relatively older technology, compared to the Sanyo NCR18650GA, LG MJ1 or Samsung 35E (in terms of both capacity & performance).
However, what I’m wondering is whether the NCR18650B’s may have more life cycles (ie. charge-discharge cycles) before getting to the 70% or 50% of initial capacity (in which time I think the Li-Ion battery is considered as mostly “spent”) compared to the newer 3500mAh batteries?
Electrical Vehicle forums like Endless Sphere test cycle life as that’s critical for them. I think many people use the lower capacity 29E because they are cheap and have good cycle life for their price.
As for cheap protected batteries both Ilumn and LiionWholesale sell protected 2600mAh batteries for $4.99 + shipping.
