Hi,
I have been reading a lot about these cells, and they seem to be awesome for the price when compared to Redilast and AW cells ( about 2/3 the price).
I am interested in the safety of the cells, and concerns with them going poof!
I use a Pila IBC charger, but are these cells as good as the Redilast and AW's as far a safety goes?
Should I just get the Redilasts or AW's and be done with it, so I can sleep at night?
Advice welcome.....
Rob
Welcome to BLF 007,these batteries are excellent cells based on the panasonic ncr 18650,same as redilast although the cell is the same,protection circuit is different and takes longer to trip due to a higher current drain.See HKJ's review https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/6745, good stuff from a battery guru.Pila charger is great,which is what I have and love it,anything with a cc/cv charging capability is good.In short,yes these are good and using a multimeter before and after charging will usually red flag any problems.
The cells are identical and the protection is very similar, the AW and Redilasts won’t be any safer.
IIRC, those cells arent that good in single cell lights, because they discharge pretty steady down to.. 2.8V or something while most other cells give most of their energy down to 3.6V.
Thanks for your feedback, but my understanding is that the cell is based on a Panasonic cell, and the cell determines the discharge charecteristics rather than the PCB or anything else, so I am a little unsure why the cell would have different discharge characteristics to an AW or Redilast cell which are also Panasonic cells?
Can someone shed some light on this?
Regards
Rob
Who has told you they do?
Their discharge graph is very similar to discharge graph of RediLast 3100mah.
(mouse over the image for RediLast graph)
Hi Shadow,
Nightcrawl's post just before mine makes that statement.
Cheers
Rob
By "most other cells" he meant, as he said, "other cells" - not the Panasonic NCR18650A.
By "other cells" he meant very popular Sanyo UR18650FM, and some other 2200 - 2600mAh cells.
ok.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Rob
Are intl outdoor 18650 protected good or not .. I'm reading all this and i understood that they can be discharged down to 2.8 , and not sure in anything now :) My English is not perfect, so after all this, I'm confused about those batteries.
And what is with that discharging below 3V and charging after that. Somebody said somewhere.. its dangerous. Why ?
The IO batteries are fine. All 2900mAh and 3100mAh batteries can be discharged down to 2.5 volt. This limit varies with actual LiIon chemistry in the battery, on most other LiIon batteries it is between 2.8 and 3 volt.
Discharging a bit under that limit and immediately charging again will not damage the battery, but storing it or discharging below 2 volt will damage the battery. It looses capacity and might be dangerous to charge.
They can be discharged down to 2.5V, no danger that's how NCR18650A are built. They are good protected cells. However what some members try to say (but don't actually finish saying it) is that if you would buy a protected cell based on the Sanyo UR18650FM you would get the same or more runtime with flashlight that use only one battery.
You should not worry about discharging, that is the purpose of the added protection to cope with these over-discharges, over-charging, short-circuits possible.
so .. for example .. i can take 1x or 2 x 18650 flashlight .. fill it with int outdoor protected, switch it on and leave it until batteries are completely discharged (light dies) .. based on what you all said i assume that protection board will at some point (2.5V or close to that) cut off current i.e. stop discharging batteries and when that occurs i can immediately put them to charger.
correct me if I'm wrong.
You are correct.
Some flashlights will offer a low voltage warning or cut the current themselves.
That is correct, especially if you run the light at high output.
Running it in a low mode will be considerable harder on the batteries, because they will be at the low voltage for much longer time.
I thought that battery protection board will cut off current not the flashlight electronic itself.
This depends on the light, some lights does cutoff the current others do not.
Lights that is designed for 1x18650 and 2xCR123 will often turn off before the battery protection trips.
Thank you guys .. you are very helpful. Beer is on me.
Good summary of battery options available =)
Glad I stuck with the Sanyo UR18650FM for my Fenix 1x18650s!
Btw, anywhere else to get cheap Sanyo UR18650FM's besides Intl-outdoors that also ships from the US?
Seems like everyone's selling the Panasonic NCR18650A's instead.