UltraFire Strikes Again.
It's good you have made time to test some cells that are considered bad by many people but still I can see in real-life the still remain the most popular cells by a huge margin. Hopefully many will read your previous reviews.
Regarding the test is it very interesting how the performance at 200mA is worse than at 500mA in terms of capacity.
We can expect at 20mA to perform much worse due to being a 10 times lower current being drawn?
So it could happen that at 20mA the capacity to be worse than at 200mA if the cell is cold, especially since it is such a light load.
I've seen temperature graphs for discharges in some datasheets where it is clearly that at 40Celsius there is a higher capacity than at 10Celsius, but I haven't thought about that in the case of this UltraFire.
I agree that it is important, otherwise some users will convince themselves that the “old” Ultrafire reviews are no longer representative of what’s on the market.
Recently BG Micro had a sale listing for some UF 26650 batteries listed as about 6000 mAh as I recall. I emailed them strongly recommending that they get them tested. The owner of BG Micro knew another BLF member with testing capability. The batteries were below 200 mAh and could not even put out an amp. The worst POS batteries that the BLF member had ever tested per a PM he sent me. BTW BG Micro pulled the listing on the batteries as soon as I contacted them and the owner thanked me after the batteries were tested. Indicated that I had saved them from a major customer relations problem.
Depending on source UF marked batteries can vary from BAD as in the ones tested here to about the capacity and capability of a brick like the ones BG Micro listed.
I've posted links before how thoudans of Ultrafire 4800mAh 5800mAh and such type of cells are sold on Ebay.
They are sold in thousands (9000pcs sold, etc, just checl ebay) for years, they sell 3800mAh for more than 4 years, there are thousands of new people buying flashlights that keep buying and buying these cells and the more the time passed the more they appear as "real"
Someone saw a 3800mAh and said, "yeah I understand there is no 3800mAh 18650 cell, but maybe they inflated the rating from 3100mAh or something"
Which was of course just uneducated wishful thinking.
I doubt it, I am not the first one that has proved UltraFire makes bad batteries.
I did not take you comment that way and I doubt they will ever have a great battery. If they made a great battery they would probably use another name.
I see this nearly every time I recommend against Ultrafire. I have still yet to see testing indicating that a ‘good’ Ultrafire even exists…
Not that it would matter, with such saturation of the supply it’s not even worth the $3-4 savings taking the time trying to get this mythical Ultrafire.