While I agree with anyone that says terminating a charge early or not draining a cell to low will prolong life of a cell.
My thoughts are that I usually only cycle any one particular battery of mine a few dozen times a year. I just have several batteries with several different lights.
So any one battery doesn’t get used that much per year. Then about every two years or so out comes a better battery in the same format. Like most people I buy a few to replace my out dated cells. I never really use any cells longer than about 4 years with a few hundred cycles on them, I have newer better cells to use.
So while draining them to 2.5v that’s suggested lowest in most data sheets could be considered abusing them. I will probably never see the day when it actual matters becuse I have already replaced them with something better.
Not everone will feel this way, and some people will want the cells to last as long as possible which is fine. Nothing wrong at all having health cell practices.
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I have mixed feelings about what I read in datasheets and some test data. When you use cells outside what the test data showed or outside what’s in the datasheets things change a little, kind of uncharted territory in the cell data world. There were a few peolpe that experienced this uncharted territory in this thread.
That’s a interesting thread on battery voltage being to low.
Most of us received batteries that had been setting on a shelf for 3 years never used and measured 1.9v upon arrival. As comfychair said ” they appeared to be just taking a little nap”. I still have those cells at 11 years old now. Its about due for another discharge test.
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If I was using them hiking and needed the light to see, it definetly wouldn’t bother me to squeeze ever last lumen out of the cell.