I think you can safely hand a Quark to anyone and not worry that they will hurt themselves or your batteries ..if you're in the states nimh is dirty cheap any way ..i have never understood peoples obsession with coddling ,conditioning ,massaging a battery that is under 2 bucks eneloops used to be a buck on sale and most of my duraloops are like a buck and a quarter ...they deserve about a fraction of a second of athought from me .. life's to short to care about dollar batteries that almost always last 5 years no matter what I throw at them .
Comparing lithium with nimh is like comparing Apples to Orangutans
I think lithium in the hands of the uneducated is bad .. in multiple cell lights it's almost dangerous ..comparitively Nimh is absolutely safe ..
'''''''''Just Buy the damn Quark ..You must be seriously interested ..otherwise you wouldn't be so bothered by it ?? [ You clearly want it ].. buy a couple ... :P
I use my dumber chargers to get a battery up off the floor when find one so seriously pounded that another charger doesn't even recognize it .. Lmrs do the same thing .. i've seen them in the basement before and my better chargers just ignored them .
I don't lend people lights anyway but if i did it would be a AAA , AA , multiple AA ..maybe a 2 D.
I think It gives us all reasons to buy cheap Q3's q5's etc for under 10 $ ..personally i have lots of cheap lights to loan or gift ..handing someone a 18650 IMHO is just trying to impress them and not very smart unless you know they know what they are doing .Again i think nimh is a no brainer ..if you're that worried about batteries just toss in alkalines ..that way you'll only be mad at yourself when they leak ..
So many posts here with good advice lateotter that this is probably just a "me too" comment by now, but....
Simply don't give UNPROTECTED Li-Ion's to anyone. Protected cells only and none of your crapfire rubbish if it's for someone else, ESPECIALLY when you clearly know they are not that interested in anything other than the wow factor when they press the little button! And in an ideal world, single cell lights only. Anything else is just too risky - period.
As to your NiMH. You have a good charger which can analyse your cells for condition/capacity. Sounds like you may be a little like me and want to look after them so......
Analyse them every 6-12 months (more often if you like) and just keep them in fairly well matched sets. Sets of two for 2 cell lights, sets of 4 for four cell lights, you get the picture. If you want to be really anal, number them and track them with a spreadsheet.
Most of the time it's probably you using them so no problem. On the rare occasion when you need to loan them out, pair them up beforehand. I don't think even running them down to zero like most of the great unwashed will do too much damage if they are well-paired, unless you do it over and over again.
Here, Eneloops are usually about $4 each so I like to look after mine as much as I can, and just keep an eye out for sales. But like Boaz says, if you can get them for a bit over a buck each, perhaps you can afford to be a little less obsessive.
Maybe you should encourage your friend to get his own high-quality light instead of borrowing your stuff. You could even offer to give him advice or help him to order on-line if he isn't into that kind of thing. You might be best to steer this kind of bloke towards a high-output Ni-MH light though, preferably running D cells.
Sure, it might be "comparing Apples to Orangutans" but I wouldn't give a Li-Ion light to someone who had shown such little interest in the details.
Thanks for sharing your advice guys. It’s stuff that I usually adhere to, but unwisely didn’t with this particular friend. Plus it was my bad to stick in unprotected cells. It was the first time and will be the last.
On a side note, I wish I had more than one channel to charge li-ions right now. I broke the tab off the slider on one of the channels and still haven’t bought a new one yet. Still shopping for a relatively quick two channel for times like these when I get the request for lights on short notice.
I would never gift someone a multi cell Li-ion light. Too risky. Heck, they aren’t even my favorite to use and maintain. Although I still really like my TK35, it doesn’t get used as much as some of my other single cell lights. There have been just 3 people that I have gifted Li-ion lights to. They were all single cell lights with protected 18650s and relatively safe (xtar) chargers. I also gave them all the requisite warnings and info. Everyone else gets aa. For some reason I consider lending lights to be very different from gifting them, because I would be the one maintaining the batteries. Apparently I should treat them more the same.
In hindsight, I wish my HD2010 had come in before the trip. It would have been a safer alternative with the bonus of better throw too. Generally I use my lights more casually and mostly for fun, but he uses them more as a tool for our work. I can’t really blame him for using the lumens as necessary. BTW, can you consider someone educated if you told them everything they need to know about the lights, or do you have to quiz them first?
I have considered both the PA40 and a Quark x AA2 for him, but just can’t bring myself to spend that much on a light for someone else, especially someone who will not appreciate them as much as I would. I told him about the deals too, but he wouldn’t cough up the money for them either. Just easier to borrow from me I guess. As it stands now, I missed out on both awesome deals because I debated too much and never pulled the trigger. Plus I’m pretty cheap and have strict budget constraints. Oh well… I’m used to missing out on deals. Chalk it up to my years of experience with my other check-obsessively website, Slickdeals. If I would have bought one or both, I probably would end up keeping them for myself anyways. And SWMBO knows I have way too many lights already.
So true. Sounds like you’ve learned from first-hand experience. The lights did come back with more chunks of crap on them than when I gave them away. It seems that anything I let him borrow always comes back greasier and dirtier than before.
I usually try to baby my lights, but most of them are banged up in some way because I’m rather clumsy, even though I try really hard to be careful. I gave up on babying the TK35 after I chipped the ano on the rollers that they have at airport security checkpoints. Those rollers must be made out of some of the hardest material out there. I just set it down normally while I was loading up my pockets and bang! - chunk of ano gone… Should have been more gentle I guess. My HD2010 has already suffered a drop onto concrete, and it hasn’t even been a month.
