6 Panisonic 2900mah Batteries for $10

Within 24 hours of charging these to 4.20-4.21, they fall back down to 4.17. They may indeed fall lower, but I keep recycling them, hoping that they will stabilize like almost all of the other 300 or so li-ion batteries I have had the pleasure of knowing over the past year. But they don’t stabilize. They won’t hold a 4.20 charge no matter what I do.

Older panasionics hold a charge like no one’s business. I have ancient lime green 2000mah pack pulls that hold a rock-steady 4.2 volts for 3 months.

It isn’t just these used 2900s. The other 2900 gray panasonic pack pulls that I and other BLFers bought recently also will not hold a 4.20 charge. They just won’t do it.

On the good side, they put out more juice than any other battery I have. Low-light-output lights heat up when I use these batteries in them. (The emitters heat up —indicating higher voltage. The batteries themselves are NOT heating up.) Tailcap readings go up. I can actually verify increased brightness with these batteries in many lights over Samsung pinks and purples. I used a lux meter to measure the brightness.

But they just don’t hold a charge. I will now top off some of these and set them aside for a month and see what happens. I betcha they’re at 4.05 or lower after 30 days.

So, if you want a powerful battery for cheap, get these. If you want to take a battery from the charger and put it in the light and use it. If you want to be able to pick up a battery a month after you charged it and have it be fully charged, these probably would not be a good choice.

Hope this helps!

I ordered one of these packs for $9.97 hopefully I have good luck with it.

I have some brand new factory fresh ones that do the same thing. Voltage falls to the 4.17V area and stays there. Looks like it the nature of these cells… new or old. Perhaps if you charged them to 4.23 volts they would hold 4.20V. Anyway, the difference in runtime between 4.20V and 4.17V is around 1/2 a second.

**I should be getting mine on monday. at $1.50 a battery I wont complain at any voltage, plus these are 3.6v. dif chemistry? I think what is most important is runtimes. and hope to see some of those soon.

how to tell what cells are inside the pack?
after seeing this thread I browsed on ebay, but there’s no such information…

You pays your money, you takes your chances…

we know for sure there is 6 panasonic 18650 2900mah batteries inside you can see that info in the pic. And the poster above has received them .but as far as dom and actual parformance of those cells, that info is not fully known as of yet. At $1.66 a battery I’m willing to try my luck.

>>>>how to tell what cells are inside the pack?
>>>>after seeing this thread I browsed on ebay, but there’s no such information…

almost ALL (all) major-manufacturer laptop packs say country of manufacture for the cells and country of manufacture for the the pack on the pack. I think I have seen maybe one out of tens and tens of packs that didn’t say what country. If it says “cells made in japan,” then it has to be panasonic because sanyo doesn’t make a 2900mah battery. In fact, I’m almost positive that panasonic is the ONLY compnay that makes a 2900mah battery.

Obviously if it says batteries made in china, avoid it like the plague. But otherwise 5800 packs have to be panasonic.

As for other packs, cells made in korea will be samsung or LG batteries (all great batteries although the gray 2400 samsungs are not some of my facorites), but usually samsung in HP packs.

Made in Japan cells have to be Panasonic or Sanyo or Sony, all great batteries. Sony batteries are always in Vaio and sony brand laptop packs.

Hope this helps.

I have not received my pack yet but this would be my first pack pull. Does anyone have any advice or things I should look out for? Or can someone point me to a post for pulling packs.

>>>>>>I have some brand new factory fresh ones that do the same thing. Voltage falls to the 4.17V area and stays there. Looks like it the nature of these cells…

Yeah I have some from fasttech that do the same thing. Exactly like the ebay pack pulls. Makes sense. They’re for laptops almost exclusively and the packs get charged regularly. Most laptops users are more concerned about how long the computer will run, NOT how long the packs retain a charge.

I would ignore these in a second and buy something else because they don’t hold a charge well, BUT their output KILLS. I have been modding a Home Depot super thrower with a new driver and emitter. Lux meter with a brand new cahrged samsung pink 2600 or purple 2800 = 31k lux. Just charged 2900 = 34-35k. Not a huge diff but it’s there. No other cell I have can beat it. Even the 3400 panasonic. They’re killer batteries, just not in the charge retention dept.

I also haven’t looked at the charging specs. Maybe the I4 charger isn’t using the preferred algorithm for these cells.

They hold their charge quite well. There is zero real world difference between a cell at 4.20V and 4.17V. And once you put a load on them, there is less than zero difference.

Well, yeah, there isn’t much diff between 4.17 and 4.20, but for me, there is a diff between 4.20 and 4.10 volts. For me that’s 25% of the usable voltage. I rarely use a battery below 3.80 volts. For many of my lights, that’s a substantial drop in light output.

With the new xml2 lights, once I’m below 4 volts, I’m in abyssmal output territory. And not some doesn’t-matter output percentage reduction. I’m estimating L2 lights lose 25-35% of their output below 4 volts.

But as I said in an earlier post, maybe the 2900s stabilize at 4.17 volts. I bought three new packs on ebay, three cells from fasttech and one used pack. I charged five cells (one from each of those sources) to 4.20 volts and will track their loss over 30 days. Surprisingly, two cells almost immediately dropped to 4.17 volts within 24 hours, but now they’re back up to 4.2 volts!!! The other two have dropped to 4.18 volts.

And also as I said, tain’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cells outperform all my others …. and at over 300 batteries in my collection at last count (even counting the 30 I just gave away here on BLF), that’s a lot of cells to beat. So if I have to cook ’em the same day I use em, that’s what I’ll do. Not a big deal.

Once under load, just about any cell will be below 3.9V The energy between 3.9 and 4.2V is pretty much an illusion… sort of like the difference between fumes in a gas tank and the actual gasoline.

I usually start from a corner with something sharp like a knife and working around spreading the pack aprart carefully not to stick anything inside it too far that might make a short. once apart
you have to be very careful when separating the cells esp on the positive ends. all the batts are soldered together with metal bars which are sharp and will cut right in through other batteries’ shrink wrap if you bend and twist it the wrong way. you could get seriously burned if you get a short. just take your time is best advice I could give

Ubehebe

Do you really live in Death Valley?

>>>>>Once under load, just about any cell will be below 3.9V The energy between 3.9 and 4.2V
>>>>>is pretty much an illusion… sort of like the difference between fumes in a gas tank and the actual gasoline.

I guess my lux meter is reading an illusion in 20-35% reduced light ouput when the voltage falls from 4.2 to 3.9 volts. :wink:

Hey Top cat. You won the battery giveaway. I sent you a PM. Didn’t you get it? Please send me your snail-mail address so I can send you the batteries.

>>>>>Ubehebe Do you really live in Death Valley.

Yes, I live in a tiny tiny ghost town (population: about 30 on a good day) in the mountain/plateau above Death Valley National Park. I’m 80 miles round trip from the nearest gas station and store and 190 miles from the nearest home depot and wal-mart :wink:

DV sink is now officially the hottest place on earth. It used to be the second hottest, but they found that the supposed hottest place was not Libya as previously thought but really is DV. They made a mistake taking the reading back in 1932 or whenever. I don’t know how they could possibly decide 80 years later that the reading was wrong, but that’s waht they say.

However, I am crazy but not nuts. I usually try to beat the heat in June-August and escape to The OC, Calif., but I’ll be back in DV at the end of August, early Sept., when it starts to cool down.

WOW I WON!!!

No I didn’t see the note, but I just got it thanks, That’s great!!!

If I hadn’t replied to this thread I may not have seen it at all…

One of life’s funny little quirks, eh?

Yes, I’ll send it out to you.

Just curious. Do you have internet service there?

>>>>>Just curious. Do you have internet service there?

Until a year ago, all we had was dial-up. And not even 56k dialup. Because of the bad phone line, the fastest dialup we could get was about 24k. It was slower than watching grass grow.

But recently, Hugesnet satellite internet became available. It is expensive, abysmally slow and has all sorts of horrible latency and other technical problems, but it’s faster than dialup. So we’re using that. It’s better than nothing but just barely. It also has quotas, so watching youtube or other vids is inpossible.