Test/Review of MBI Nuke 14500 650mAh (Black)

MBI Nuke 14500 650mAh (Black)



Official specifications:

  • MBI Nuke 14500 - Black Label
  • Capacity: 650mAh
  • Max Discharge: 10C
  • Max Peak Discharge: 7.8A (30sec)
  • Life/Cycles: 150




MBI makes custom flashlight, until now it has been small but bright lights. For this he need small but powerful batteries. To get this, he has got some custom specified cells. Capacity and cycle count is on the low side (Probably unavoidable with this power output), but it can deliver a lot of power for its size.












The cell do maintain capacity at just about any load. There are some small differences between the cells, this is no problem when using a single cell.





With the limited capacity, the battery cannot support long runtime at full load (That would need a larger cell).











Conclusion

This is not the only IMR 14500 cell that can deliver high current, but it has a very good performance and it is rated for the high current.
As usual with cells from unspecified manufactures I will only rate it acceptable.



Notes and links

The batteries was supplied by MBI (matchboxinstruments) for review.

How is the test done and how to read the charts
How is a protected LiIon battery constructed
More about button top and flat top batteries
Comparison to other LiIon batteries

Thanks for the review HKJ!

Are these batteries for sale separately anywhere? They would be fun in my 14500 hotrods, as an alternative for the Efest IMR's I'm using now.

Keep an eye on his website, they will probably be released together with his next flashlight (Zeus): http://www.matchboxinstruments.com/

thanks for the link, pfjew! those are expensive flashlights!

Custom made lights usual are expensive. I doubt he will ever make money on his torpedo light, he has worked on it a couple of years and he pay people to develop electronic and make the light, including all the prototypes.

You can see the history on CPF and it is very long.

That is quite a read, I will dive into it one of these days :-)

Interesting, I wonder whether this cell is LiCo or IMR.

Edit: I see they’re IMR. I’m still curious as to how or why the cycle count is so low.
Probably wouldn’t matter though, I doubt any of us cycle our cells more than 100 times.

Any idea what HD means on the battery label?

high discharge?

the MBI torpedo was one of the first custom projects I discovered, and I loved it, until I saw the price tag. then, I discovered BLF, and I realized I can customize my own light to what modes I want.

The build thread is quite interesting.