That can be discussed. High capacity 18650 is made by the best LiIon factories in the world and the technology is constantly updated. The size is also made in extremely high numbers.
All other sizes is made in much smaller numbers and a lot of sizes are only made by second rate factories. These factories may do their best, but they do not have access to the top rate technology.
I.e. you will not see top capacities in anything but 18650.
This cell is doing fairly well for an IMR cell, either it is a perfectly made LiMn cell or they have used some of the chemistry improvements on it.
Unfortunately they have similar capacities to this IMR cell, so in essence, this Kinoko IMR cell both provides 800-900mAh even at high currents, while the ICR cells’ performance drops at high current (even seen at 2A).
As HKJ stated, I don’t there are 18350’s with 1500-1700mAh capacity (half of the top tier 18650 cells) simply due to the lack of demand and technology. :~
Capacity can't be half of an 18650. The space required at the ends is the same no matter how long the cells are.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a shift away from 18650's in the coming years. Tablets don't use them, and they're eating into sales of laptops, and will continue to do so now that they're becoming quite powerful and there are hybrid tablets now too. Actually, the hybrid tablets are more of a return to the format brought about with the TC1000... The big variable will be electric cars. If they had the clout to influence development and production of lithium ion cells, would they prefer a different cell type?
The resistance looks exceptionally high for an IMR cell. At 0.16 it's 4 times higher than a Samsung INR 20R. Looks like the AW and Efest 18350 IMR's do much better, below 0.10.
Yes - comparing the AW IMR against this Kinoko at 3A shows the AW is clearly better, and the Efest is better too. All I care about is high amps () and that's where internal resistance is critical.
Respectfully, for higher amps usage, I would stay clear of these cells.
Yes - the 850 capacity is nice bout these. Only 350's you've tested that's higher are the XTAR's, but they have that weird initial drop in voltage - not good for XM-L2 single cell high amp applications I would think.