18650s $5 a pair?

Are there any decent quality protected 18650's for about $5 a pair?

Not really. If you're willing to use unprotected then you can harvest them from laptop batteries.

I saw some on ebay. But I know that's just asking for trouble.

Don't get those. One person on the other forum measured some cheap ones from ebay and they were all over the place in their quality. The highest was about 700 mah all the way down to 150 mah.

Lowest you can go is pair of blue "2500mAh" (actually 2200mAh) TrustFire's for $8/pair.

Welp. What are the cheapest you would recommend? (edit: Oops question answered.)

http://www.kaidomain.com/product/details.S009747 these ones if you don’t need protection.

I do need protection. And I may be 8 or more. That's why I'm very concerned about price.

What are putting these in that you need 8?

On DX

Mine have 1900mAh.

Cheap batteries are not worth it. Most of the garbage gets unloaded for a cheap price simply becasue they are either faulty, defective, shoddy or unsafe. Returns, remanufactured and possibly DOA. Usually if you buy this garbage, you'll end up spending more in the long run simply becasue cheap batts will not have the duty cycle required to be economical. You'll charge them a few times and then their done. The will never be rated at what is advertised and some of them will burn out your house or damage your charger.

Places like http://www.easylightbuy.com/ have less expensive batteries but are good quality. Everything I've purchased from them has been as advertised, new and up to spec. They have Trustfire batteries for a lot less than most of the other places. Sometimes as much as 50% lesss. They also ship pretty fast. My last order only took 14 days to receive.

I only support places that repeatedly carry good merchandise at fair prices. I don't want to give my money to the Chinese Money Whores who would sell anything ( crap).

I want to support only the good guys, even if they are outside the U.S.

They are for a skyray king and some other random 18650 lights I have. I will check out easy light buy. I haven't heard much of them. Sounds like one of the sites that the spammers are always spamming about.

Just buy the protected Trustfire flames either on ebay or from Deal Xtreme.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/trustfire-protected-18650-3-7v-true-2400mah-rechargeable-lithium-batteries-2-pack-20392

Or you could pay less at Easy Light Buy

http://www.easylightbuy.com/trustfire-tf18650-2400mah-37v-protected-liion-battery-jtv1-2pack_p257.html

Real Trustfire 2400 mah Flames for $3 less than DX. I've bought them, they are the real thing, not re-branded, not fakes.

They are $6.38 for a two pack and not $9.38

The best budget bang for your bucks from a trusted vendor is probably HKequipment.net

They have the good ultrafire 3000 mAh (2600 actual) batteries in a 4 pack for around 31 usd or you can write them and hear what price they can ships them out for if you buy 8 or more (which it sounds like you may need).
That being said think that personally I may have to go for the 3100 mAh rated xtar batteries they have when next I need some. I am tired of getting random batteries of varying quality. I have bought from CNQG (no good - 2 arrived DOA but they were quick to respond to RMA and send 2 new free of charge - but they perform about 65% of the DX 3000 mAh ultrafire ones i have so I wont go there again)
I have some that were delivered with lights as part of the package but those generally suck. Have 2 good ones though but dont remember from which vendor/package I got them.
As for checking this yourself try this method: If you have a battery description you trust (mAh rating etc) then take the price of 1 battery and divide it with the Ah rating. Like the 3100 mAh rated xtar batts:
12,5 usd / 3,1 Ah = 4,0 usd/Ah
The 2400 mAh
7,5/2,4 = 3,13 and so on :-)

Thanks for the responses. I think I'm going to try my luck with easy light buy. I will probably get the flames since the price is better than anywhere else and I haven't had trouble with them before. Are any of their $5 batteries any good?

NOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo. and i just got another pair from DX. =(

Have you guys tested the true mAh of them ?

Original?

These or these?

Both !

Because it seams a lot of people recommend batteries on here with out any actual testing and run time test do not really show true capacity.

I have personally tested 18 to 20 of these over near on 10 months now. They all test to 2400 to 2500 mAh and the protection work's, the PCB has two (IC'S) mosfets so they will handle 3 to 3.5 amp draw no problem.

Protected TrustFire 18650 3.7V 2400mAh Rechargeable Batteries - Flame (2pcs/set

I do not trust DD, DX and Ebay for genuine trustfire flame batteries !