Not sure I quite understand that rationale.
With a decent charger you can find out if your (cheap) battery is OK/fantastic/disappointing/complete garbage, whatever it cost. You can track battery performance/capacity/degradation over time. That does have the possibility of doing your own research and learning from that.
With a cheap charger >>> you will never know much of anything with any kind of quantification or reliability. It pretty much becomes, work/doesn’t work. It doesn’t give you any opportunity to learn much of anything.
I do agree, cheap batteries generally disappoint. Inexpensive, but decent chargers, can be useful for basic charging, but don’t supplant a good analyzing charger.
There are plenty of stories like mine. I bought four 26650’s that people said were Shockli 5500 rewraps… quality cells at normal price. Two years later after about six charges each, one would not hold a charge and today one charged less than half the speed of the other two. I charge at .7 amps, why hurry, and stop before 4.0v. They never got below 3.5v. Even if you buy mainstream cells, you need a good charger.
I’ve held off on buying “normal” lights but have been looking at other types.
This Dr. Prepare work light was a good price and is a pleasant surprise.
If Micro-USB is a deal breaker then skip the rest of this post.
Decent tint from COB and front emitters. Front has a bit too much blue for EDC but I’ll mainly use the COB which looks around 5000k.
UI is not awful, memory for each emitter, hold or click + or - to adjust output. Ramp speed is too fast but will get you going in the right direction.
Clicking the power switch walks you through front emitters, then COB, then OFF. This would be a problem for EDC since it remembers last output level for both emitters, but not an issue for work light.
Magnet is fairly strong, metal D-ring option on bottom.
Battery cover slides on and is held in place with a small screw.
Comes with 2x18650 button tops that run in parallel. They’re labeled 2000mAh so nothing special. It works with 1 or 2 cells.
I put a Sanyo flat top in and it works but if I ran them all the time I’d bend the contact tabs in the light outward to get a better connection.
It’s got USB out to act as a charger. There was a piece of manufacturing bit hanging off the side that I trimmed off and it stays closed better. Not great though.
The plastic it’s made of isn’t the worst I’ve seen. I suspect they’ve used normal wires in the flexing part, will eventually look inside and replace with super-fine strand wire designed for flexing installations.
There’s a 4 segment battery level LED on the back above the on/off switch.
For <$20 it’s a great light, if I needed something for hard duty I’d need to spend more.
Long post for a work light but I’ve been disappointed a few times and was happy to get a decent cheapie!
Right now there’s a dollar off coupon bringing it down to $18 shipped if Prime. I’ve seen others very similar to this for $10 higher.
Seems that the original Obulb is at a low price on Amz. I think this will be my ’lack of imagination” gift this year at ~$14.
This appears to be the older version not the newer MC (multi-color) version. I get the impression that this older version is actually more appreciated.