Olight make a “3600mAh” protected 18650 with NCR18650GA cell.
Its PCB is on the positive pole. This eliminates the connector strip running from positive to PCB on negative pole on conventional protected batteries.
It does not make the battery shorter: 68.5mm
The capacity claim is interesting because according to manufacturer’s specification the NCR18650GA has:
- Rated Capacity 3300mAh (0.67A discharge at 20°C),
- Capacity (Minimum) 3350mAh (0.67A discharge at 25°C),
- Capacity (Typical) 3450mAh (Reference only).
Let’s do a discharge test and compare with NCR18650GA and Soshine 3400mAh PCB (with NCR18650BF cell):
Not bad, but not impressive either. As expected, capacity is nowhere near 3600mAh.
During 5A discharge the PCB cuts off quite early.
At room temperature and fully charged it cuts off at 6.4A.
IMO this is not really “FOR HIGH-DRAIN DEVICES”.
Capacity, energy and average voltage, discharged to 2.50V, average over 2 tested samples, charged CC/CV/TC 1.0A/4.200V/30mA:
table(table#posts).
|A|Ah|Wh|V|
|1.0|3.315|11.862|3.578|
|3.0|3.290|11.210|3.407|
|5.0|1.447|5.064|3.501|
What’s under the wrapper?
Sanyo NCR18650GA, indeed.
I didn’t remove the cap containing the PCB. It would require brute force and probably destroy something.
I purchased the test samples at gearbest.com on 2015-07-23. They arrived 6 weeks later.