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.
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:
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?
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.
Please listen to benckie on this. Only the Trustfire from Manafont has been tested with positive results. Apparently people don't understand how easy it is to shrink a fake wrapper on an old cell and call it whatever you want. Fake TF cells have been found at DX, DD and many eBay sellers. Why take a chance to save a few bucks? TF 2400 might be $3.19 at Easylightbuy, but it also might be 600mAh in real capacity. You don't know until it is tested.
Pfft... hahaha... I have got everyone beat. 4pcs Blue UF 18650 from BuyInCoins, $3.20/pair, tested 51, 2, 3, and 18 mAh! Yes that was no mistake, TWO friggin mAh!
Granted I got most of my money back and 5% discount card, but bottom line is, don't buy these cheap batteries, especially from BIC! Well, I don't mean boycott BIC altogether, their price, shipping and CS is great, just skip their lame batteries.
Well I don't have the equipment to test for true MAH, but what I do know is all the Trustfire Flames I have got off ebay so far have been what I call very good batteries. I have bought some from Manafont as well. I can't say I can see the difference but then again I don't know which ones are actually from Manafont anymore.
I do appreciate benckie taking the time to test though. His test is why I mainly just buy the Trustfire flames now.
Fair enough, Cheap Thrills, but benckie has tested 18-20 TF 3000 flames from Manafontwith consistent performance results. They seem to be the only one that sells a consistent product.
I agree with you on the Xtars - great cells, but they do have a problem fitting in some lights, as do Hi-Max, which is another good testing brand.
Check a couple of posts below. Most astonishing thing was, they could not deliver more than 3 Amps even with a full charge and direct drive light (First pair was over 4A!!).
edit: and yes, the first pair was GREAT replacement for a bit too long Xtars. I was an idiot selling that pair away with STL-V2 :(