Possible fake Samsung 30Q 18650?

I buy several batteries from RMM a member here at blf, his store is Mtn. Electronics. When I need a driver or led from Mtn, I add in a few batteries I might need (more like I think I need) and the shipping charge barely changes. So I kill three birds with one stone and save on shipping and support a member and keep the cash in the states :+1: . To my door in a few days.
Oh yeah, he offers a 5% code for blf members “BLF”

I bought off of them several times. they are a good place to. In fact I am awaiting a Folomov A4 charger from them that is due tomorrow.

My go to dealers:

1.Liionwholsale

2. Illumns[use to be #1 until Jon opened up ~ 3 years ago]

3. IMR/Orbtronics[tie]

They happened to be out of 30Qs when I bought my D4 so I went to Amazon. The ones I got look good so far though.
Other than needing a ton of mAh …still charging and I have put 2400 mAh in them already.
Voltage was and is fine.

They took a total of 2400 mAh each. Good and full now :wink:

I recently purchased 4 button top Samsung 30Q’s from ebay:

They look different to every 30Q I’ve seen on the internet, in particular the part number is 141 instead of the usual 136. What does this mean?

Also many people say there is writing on the can under the wrap you should be able to faintly see, but I can’t see anything.

I took some photos you can see here:

I did a full test two of them on an Opus BTC3100 and got 3055 and 3012 mAh. I tested the other two on a Liitokala LH-500 and got 3122 and 3040 mAh. So they seem to have decent capacity, though I have no idea how they would go under heavy drain. I intend to use them in some flashlights. They weigh about 46 or 47 gramms on my kitchen scales.

So what is your opinion, are they fake or genuine?



Genuine Samsung 30Q batteries - or are they?

I’m surprised they tested that high for capacity, for two reasons:

  1. Most automated testers stop the test above the 2.5v that many manufacturers use when rating capacity, so they don’t squeeze out the last ~100mAh
  2. Most automated testers don’t use the super-low current that manufacturers use when rating capacity (lower discharge rates results in higher capacity)

Visibly, they don’t look obviously fake.

The real way to tell is to load test or test impedance / internal resistance.

For fun once I bought some 25R and 30Q cells off Amazon - I was 99% sure they would be fake, but knew that Amazon would refund me if (when) they were. They had the right capacity (somewhat surprisingly), but failed spectacularly trying to output anything over like 3A.

On fake FLAT tops, I noticed the 3 in “30Q” is different from the genuine. On the fakes the both the top and bottom of the 3 is rounded. The 3 on yours looks like genuine, with the top of the 3 being “slashed”. My fakes were from Amazon maybe 2 years ago. They were also about 2400 mAh capacity instead of 3000.

While IMR has a nice selection and good pricing on some cells, be VERY careful on some of their protected cells! They are currently selling a Sanyo NCR18650GA that is capable of 10A continuous output, BUT it has a third-party protection circuit added that is only capable of 5A continuous. They don’t mention that 5A limit anywhere which seems very misleading to me.

i got 10 recently from 18650 battery store, should i be concerned?

More reason to buy here.Jon lists all the specs for the batteries.Liion rewrapped GA’S with quality FNK MOSFETs for 20A high current cutoff. Not 5A!

Just noticed Average shooter has not been around for 1 year 9 months! lol!

I just had a closer look at these 30Q batteries and I can actually see a very faint print under the wrapper:

On one side I see: L0I9, 68VB1. On the other I see 64F2, 64F2

I have no idea what that means.

How can I test impedance?

You got 10 of what? You posted right after mine so I thought you were talking about the protected Sanyos, but now I see you said the 18650 Battery Store and not IMR Batteries.

If you have a voltmeter then just do Google search to find an existing good step-by-step explanation. Some chargers can measure it too.

No. 18650batterystore is legit.

I tried in the liitokala, but it was showing very inconsistent results. Of course I should have googled how to do this before I asked. So as I gather, you get a large resistor like 10ohm, do a quick voltage measurement with no load, then again quickly with load (like for a second or two), plug the values into a formula and you get the resistance. I wish the charger was more accurate and consistent.

Yes, many meters don’t give consistent readings. My Vapcell S4 Plus gives actually pretty steady results, but according to HKJ’s review the values are lower than reality. I have noticed that measured value does seem to change based on the charge level of the battery.

No worries, I just wasn’t sure I would recall it correctly and didn’t want to post something from memory.

Heres a link to the datasheet. Proving that Samsung 30Q 4 leg batteries are fake | E-Cigarette Forum

The second character “0’ in the first line should be a dead giveaway that they are real. Granted I have 30Qs from Liion wholesale (which is a ”trusted” dealer) that DO NOT follow the Samsung datasheet and they swear up and down that they are real.

One thing that guy says is that every Q30 he’s seen uses 3 legs on the top contact. These appear to only have two legs, IE one on each side. Does that suggest anything?

Why? IMO that doesn’t prove anything because any forger could know what the datasheet says and thus make their imitations look real.

Yours are sounding like fakes to me — unless others who recently purchased these cells from known reputable dealers have also seen this new difference.