Brand new Vapcell battery fully discharged

I just received my Vapcell INR18350 1100mAh - 9A battery from my Nkon order.
I measured a voltage of 1.05 Volts !

It does not seem normal to me I have never had a new battery with such a low voltage. Usually it is between 3.4 Volts and 3.6 Volts which is normal.

I recharged it a little (15 minutes at 0.75 A) taking precautions, it went back to 3.3 Volts which is consistent (charge at approximately 20%). I will see if the voltage remains stable before going to 4.2 Volts.

I’m afraid the internal structure is no longer very stable.

Should I be worried ?

I’ll probably send a mail to Nkon tomorrow.

If it was me I’d ask for a refund or replacement. No telling how safe the battery is and personally I would discharge it rather than have it sitting around fully or even partially charged.

Something is wrong with the cell for it to be so low, and a 1.0v lion cell is not something I’d want to revive. It’s not worth the risk.

Thanks for the answers.
I’ll take your advice, safety first.
I have discharged my battery to 2.7 Volts, it goes for recycling.
I’m going to test Nkon’s after sales service.

I am a fair hack with lights & electronics in general but…a similar thing happened to me when 2x 26650 Keepower 5200 cells arrived in the mail & they measured a low .9volts. The seller told me to not use them (he was very reputable) and sent me new ones. But I charged them with an old mobile phone charger that I’d cut the fitting off. Shortly they came up to near 3v and my proper Nitecore charger accepted them and I slowly chargers them to 4.2v. Those cells have been great, hold well over 5k-mAh & are now healthy according to my charger. I use them in EA01 & MT01-mini for months without any noticeable problems. But I realise Li-ion cells can be dangerous & what I did goes against advice from smarter people than I. I couldn’t believe how fast they went from 0.9v-2.9v off a low 0.5amp charger. It was 5-10 mins.

I’d test their ASS (ha!) before dumping the cell for recycling, just in case they want it back, even on their dime.

Of course I won’t throw it away before the exchange.
But it will not be necessary.
​​Nkon answered me in 2 hours and they send me another one (they will check the voltage before sending it to be sure) :smiley:
No need to send back the defective battery.

This is real customer service :+1:

There ya go. :laughing:

Nkon is great :slight_smile: Above is a perfect example why I order my batteries from them :slight_smile:

I was told by the first guy who sold li-ion cells on Ebay-AU that they are banning the sale of them. He had sold off all his stock as they shut him down.

I received my new replacement battery on Saturday.
Nkon had to ship it from Europe and not from China for it to be so fast. :smiley:
The voltage of the new battery is good.

Out of curiosity I continue to monitor the voltage of the faulty battery after discharging it to 2.7 volts.
It loses 0.1 volt per day. It will quickly return to 1 volt.

Now you see why I am, for almost 10years now, a satisfied customer of NKON :slight_smile:

why would they ship from china? they are from the netherlands.

I’ve received the blue 7A Vapcell 14500’s from a US retailer that read ~1v and don’t hold a charge (2pc). The gold 3A ones from the same order worked fine.

You are right, I am so used to ordering flashlights from China :person_facepalming:

As long as the internal resistance of an over dis-charged battery checks ok, methods to revive such batteries are usually successful and safe. Some expensive chargers even have such recovery functions, but if not they could still be recovered by hooking the positives all together and negatives all together with several fully charged batteries. That would be dangerous if the battery had an internal short. The issue with most chargers is they will not attempt to charge a battery that is too low voltage for safety reasons. A more expensive charger has the ability to test the battery prior to the recovery of an over dis-charged battery. If checking the internal resistance indicates either a short or an open condition…the battery is toast, toss it.