Test/review of AW IMR18650 3000mAh (Red) 2016

Batteries and Chargers Rechargeable Batteries
1

AW IMR18650 3000mAh (Red) 2016







Official specifications:

  • Nominal capacity: 3000 mAh

  • Nominal Voltage: 3.7V

  • Lowest Discharge Voltage: 2.50V

  • Diameter: 18.00mm

  • Length: 65.00mm +/- 0.1mm

  • Max. discharge: 20A

  • Max charge rate: 1.5 to 4A

  • Lowest discharge rate: 2.5V

  • Working temperature: –20 to 60 Degree Celsius




Batteries with both high capacity and high current ability from AW.










The discharge curves tracks very nicely and capacity drops only a little with increase current, at least up to the rated 20A.
But why do one cell terminate on temperature and other do not?



From this temperature chart the explanation is clear, I forgot to mount the temperature sensor on the A cell.
The battery gets rather warm at 15A





The cell without temperature sensor must have been very warm here. It was warm enough to get damaged!









The damage to the A cell is very obvious here.



And also on this curve. Due to this damage I had to cheat with the “internal resistance” value in the table, it is only for cell B, I did not use the value from the damaged cell.





Conclusion

The batteries has good performance but watch out for the temperature at high current.



Notes and links

The batteries was supplied by aw-akku.de for review.

How is the test done and how to read the charts
How is a protected LiIon battery constructed
More about button top and flat top batteries
Compare to 18650 and other batteries
2

Thank you again for the testing you provide.

I do hope the battery distributors would correctly label their batteries; this is not a true 20 amp battery. Until they do label them more truthfully your tests will remain very important.

3

So what’s inside? Not 30Q or VTC6. HG2?

4

These track really close to the EFEST IMR 3000 Purple 2016 discharge curves, but lag in total capacity a little.

Definitely not as good as the VTC6, but nothing else is.

5

Where can you buy AW IMR in USA?

6

It is LG HG2 battery