Test / Review: TrustFire TF26650 5000mAh (Flame)

Should have guessed to rid of “by”. Found the seller finally. Price changed a little. Thanks for the tip to get rid of “by”. The problem gave me a pause to wait for the results of others actual “field” test.

Didn’t (Couldn’t) get the battery. Bedsides I am incapable of doing any testing except the one by eyeballs. I leave the real test to more learned members.

Oops, sorry dno36 / BLightSam. I directed my responses backwards! You both understood and answered anyway though. :slight_smile:

@Old-Lumens,

Thanks for the warning about “xxxxFire” batteries. But I consider ‘Trust’ is far better than the ‘Sure’ even though it’s certainly not as good as the name brands. I am considering the Trustfire 26650 because of positive reports from 3daysofdarkness (08/16/2014) and now dno36. Considering this battery basically to check out the 26650 lights, and will be actually used only a couple of times. For that I don’t want to spend a lot of $$$.

I stumbled onto that one, and was actually debating whether to offer $14 or $12. What do you think, $14 or $12?

$12 might be a bit scant, but what the heck, the worst they can say is ‘no’.
If I recall there were a couple of other sellers in the mid-$14 range.
Let us know what you discover.

Also thought $12 might be pushing too far. Bid $14. Let’s see what happens.

Go ahead and bib $12, see if they counter offer.
If they just reject your offer of $12 and there is not counter offer, then try $14.

Does that how Make Offer typically work? I made a bid of $14. ebay says seller’s response may take up to 48 hours. If that’s not accepted, that may be a good excuse for me to forgo the battery altogether for now.

Yes, “make an offer” is like bargaining. Buyer offers a lower price than they want to pay. Seller offers a higher price than they want to pay. Somewhere along the lines of the bargaining / negotiation these prices meet in the middle.

In bazaars in Africa, India or Turkey, bargaining is supposed to be good manners. Maybe I should have offered $12 — to be in good manners. :slight_smile:

“Bargaining” is considered very honorable in the Asian sector….The worst that can happen is that they reject the offer and do not counter-offer. If they counter, you can take it or counter-offer back. Go get ’em!

I made an offer and received a counter on this light:
TrustFire-7-CREE-XM-L-T6-8500LM-LED-Flashlight-2pcs-Rechargeable-26650-Battery

Details about TrustFire 7*CREE XM-L T6 8500LM LED Flashlight + 2pcs Rechargeable 26650 Battery

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ttmallzone365 (98390 )
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I made an offer adding a third 26650 battery to the deal and they came back $2.40 above my offer. I went back to them at $0.50 less than their counter-offer…….we’ll see what happens

Cheers

Making an offer that is considered too low can be considered a bit of an insult, however, you need to start somewhere.

Where to begin is the big question. In Mexico I don’t hear about honor in bargaining, but it’s expected. And you hear people bragging about getting deals at 50% off. Wonder if that’s not taken as an insult.

The $14 was rejected, and ebay, not the seller, gave a chance for another Make Offer. Thought about quitting, then considered the fact that getting more capacity battery at 18650 price. Made $15 offer and I fully expect that will be accepted.

Greetings O-L,
I have been exposed to the Ult-Crap batteries from China just like most of us here.
I get a nice chuckle from time-to-time when testing them, but have seen TrustFires test fairly well, so…
I have purchased 4 pairs of Trustfire 26650’s from 2 different sellers recently.
All of them came shrink-wrapped in pairs with the TF hologram label on them.
I tested them all with my iMax B6 at a 1.0A discharge, had to move my time up to 360 minutes because at 330 mins, they were hitting the timer cutoff.
The WORST one of the eight I had was over 5300mAh.
Am I doing something wrong?
I have tested well over 100 different batteries on this iMax and they all seem to make sense to me, except maybe these TF 26650’s.

Thanks for all of your work here
Dean

Sounds like your iMax is on the optimistic side when measuring batteries and maybe you also was lucky with the 26650 cells.

If you have a DMM try measuring the actual discharge current when you have selected 1A on the iMax.

Greetings,

Sorry about the late reply here....

I do have a DMM, however......my 1st attempt at recording discharge amperage sent everything into shutdown mode.

How would I hook-up the DMM (properly) to the discharger-battery assembly?

In series with the battery. You connect the red 4mm charger connector to the 10A terminal on the DMM and the common terminal on the DMM to the + on the battery. The DMM has to be in the 10A range.

The black 4mm charger connector goes to battery minus as usual.

OK Thanks again HKJ.....work perfectly

My DMM showed and seemed to rhythmically shift between -0.97 & -0.98 as it discharged. I went ahead and tried 2 other different batteries as well and the results were identical.

I have a basic DMM, but when I got it, compared it to the results to my friends company provided Fluke, my side-by-side results were spot-on with his. So I have reasonable trust in my DMM results.

It is kind of a 'pain' to just test 1 battery at a time with my iMax-B6, but I have gotten along running many tests overnight. I have been looking at some of the multi-function chargers like the Opus 3400, as a better all-in-one type alternative. The resistance results seems to a bit poor in all of these type charger/analyzers.....Maybe to do I-R testing I'll just need to made one of the suggested set-ups and do the math myself.

Thanks again for all your help and the work you do here for all of us!!

Dean

OK troops, I am a bit confused here. This is a pic of my latest test of one of these batteries.

I just received 2 more today and shall test over the weekend.

I am willing to send one of these of to a greater test-worthy member if it will solve my mini-quandry as to why these batteries seem to test higher now than in the original test.

Usually if a company improves their product they will do so with much hype and repackaging and re-badging in an effort to pump up sales....not the case here.

TrustFire/UltraFire/etc. might just get whatever cell they can and then put their wrapper around. This means that the capacity and other parameters might change for each batch.