Can someone steer me in the right direction with these batteries, ive bought 5 from ebay over the past 5 months. They claim to be 3800mah they work for some time and then die out no matter how much i try to charge them. Its as if they lost their power.
Where do you buy a decent 3800mah 18650 battery that lasts at least 1 yr or more of use? Whats the average price?
Thanks
Steering you in the right direction is AWAY FAST! There is no such thing as 3800mAh batteries, and Ultrafire batteries are known to be very unreliable, false mAh and can explode if you are sent faulty batteries, which seems to be common with Ultrafire. Most Ultrafire 18650s are 1/2 to 1/5 the stated capacity, and can be used batteries re-wrapped. Buy these instead and you will see an absolutely HUGE difference in the run time of your light, plus they have a protection circuit: WallBuys.com is for sale | HugeDomains
Also, I forgot to write: if the batteries you have are not holding charge, they can be dangerous and explode if you try to use them. Do not keep charging or using them and the best suggestion is to try to return them if possible and if not, throw them away at a Home Depot or store that recycles batteries. If you wont do that, buy a digital volt meter and test the batteries: if they are below 2.5V, again, throw them away. If they charge up but lose charge quickly, you probably were sent 500mAh or something similar re-wrapped with a false label as “3,800mAh”. The largest capacity cell made is the 3400mAh Panasonic 18650, so you are starting out with a false claim on poor batteries (typical Ultrafire 18650s).
We’ve had decent luck with the Trustfire Flames (which might be Sanyo?), but good batteries like the Panasonics have come down in price to the point where there’s not much reason to buy cheaper batteries. And I’d certainly steer clear of any other xFire batteries in all cases. The wife started with e-ciggies about the same time I started with flashlights, and we quickly learned the UltraFires were junk.
TF Flames are not Sanyo, but are decent cheap batteries.
However, quality batteries are only a bit more, so I don’t understand buying TF Flames.
I’ve always been curious of who made them. There’s not many 18650 battery factories in the world.
Agreed. There’s not much reason to buy them these days with sellers like FT and WB dumping boatloads of Panasonics at cheap prices. But even a couple years ago, the good batteries were up to 3x the cost of the TF Flames, so they made more sense back then.
Just looking at protected batteries at Fasttech:
2x TF Flames 2400mah are $8.87
2x Sanyo 2600mah are $11.03
2x NCR18650B 3400mah are $16.20
Shopping around you can get the NCR’s cheap when places like Wallbuys are doing group buys.
I definitely do not see a need at all any more to buy anything but trusted name brand cells when it comes to 18650 batteries. Stick with Panasonic, Sanyo, LG or Samsung cells (or those who re-wrap them for their own re-branding). The savings (which is not really that much now) is not worth the scare or hassle of Trustfire/Ultrafire/etc. When I first got into this hobby last year I tried to save a buck by purchasing some Ultrafire/Trustfire 18650 cells and they always disappointed. They were all highly overrated on the capacity claims with the Ultrafire being almost completely worthless for anything. Once I dipped into the known cells from known manufactures (first was a pair of LG 2600’s off ebay) I have never looked back. Those LG’s lasted 2x-4x longer than the 4 pairs of Trustfire/Ultrafire cells I had bought up till that time. Needless to say once I purchased some more quality 18650’s (4x3100 and 4x3400 Keeppowers) all the Trust/Ultra’s went off to HomeDepot for recycling!
The only Trustfires I have now are their 26650’s which for the price are really good cells considering the big 4 (Panny/Sanyo/LG/Sammy) haven’t gone into this size cell yet.
What are the highest mah batteries one can buy before the diameter starts to get to large to fit some lights? Or does it vary by brand? I have been buying 2600 mah Tenergy brand batteries, but the Sanyo is cheaper from Fasttech than the Tenergy I buy from the site I use. Both the 2600 and the 2800 show 18.3 mm. and then one 2800 shows 18.2.
Or this this more of a flashlight issue?
It’s really the protection that causes trouble. My tightest lights can still fit NCR 3400 unprotected batteries.
I also purchased Ultrafires and “other” batteries before I got quality batteries a long while ago. I purchased several sets for several lights from different sources, for both myself and others for xmas and I found very definitively that non-quality 18650s are absolutely not worth it. I got some dead, some different lengths by +/-5mm, all way below capacity, and some died after a couple uses. The first quality batteries I got were Orbtronics (more expensive than necessary but I researched afterwards and saw quality could be worth it), and I got 1hr 23 mins for the Orbtronics vs 30 and 21 minutes for two sets of “good” “3000mAh” Ultrafires and 18 mins run time for “5000mAh” batteries in the same flashlight. That’s about 1/3 the runtime at best, about 1/5 for the worst set, far from worth the purchase at even half price.
Now, they aren’t worth it with just the mAh difference, but that doesn’t even consider the other negatives which include: may not hold any charge “new”, degradation (several of my Ultrafire cells that actually worked held less and less charge over just a few recharges), questionable or no protection circuit (several opened Ultrafires have been shown to have a phoney protection circuit), possible “venting” or explosion (most rare explosion reports I’ve seen have been Ultrafires, and with no protection circuit and low quality, this is even more likely).
Further big issues: you have NO idea what you get when you receive an Ultrafire, several sites sell “official” Ultrafire wrappers that anyone can order and wrap any battery and sell it as “Ultrafire”. Some of them wont discharge at a high enough rate to get maximum brightness out of a LED light, and many voltage “sag” more quickly (dimmer faster). Also, some Ultrafire 18650s arrived dead and I had to return ship them (time/hassle and possible cost eliminate any savings by itself). In fact, I think each issue with them I listed above, even if it was the ONLY issue, would be more than enough incentive to not buy.
Trustfire I suspect is lower quality as well in 18650s from many reports, but 26650 and 14500 Trustfire Flames are “good”. Not a quality standard like Panasonic 18650s, but pretty good: I know my 26650 Trustfire Flames have been good over many uses, and 14500s are kind of the default choice ( AFAIK very few out there, and “good” brands offer no better capacity for 3x price ).
Why spend literally a few bucks less on something that you can use 500-1000+ times and expose yourself to the reduced runtime and increased risk of a cheap battery? (which also won’t work for 500-1000 recharges)
It tells you on Ultrafire’s website that they do not make 18650 batteries over 3000mAh. So what you have been buying is fake Ultrafires.
Right, he did. But I always cringe when people say this, because it implies “get real Ultrafires” which should NOT be the message. Since there may even be more ‘fake’ Ultrafires than ‘real’ Ultrafires online, with no reliable way to tell the difference…and since in China all companies can and many do “brand” their batteries Ultrafire (evidenced by the multiple “purchase your Ultrafire wrappers here” sites)…and we dont know how many of many/most of these problems also apply to ‘real’ Ultrafires…and we know that many of us have purchased what is supposed to be a ‘real’ Ultrafire and had the same types of problems: we can only conclude all the known problems also apply to ‘real’ Ultrafires. Plus HKJ tested and reviewed them and they were poor quality. A “real” Ultrafire is not really an improvement over a ‘fake’ necessarily (you could even get a re-wrapped 2800mAh Panasonic in a Ultrafire wrapper and have something better!).
It doesnt. It just tells them they got fakes. They dont have to buy Ultrafire again. In fact they’d obviously do better to avoid them if there’s lots of fakes going about.
Thats great info, i will measure them, thanks
Unprotected gives you a smaller size for tighter lights, as well as better performance.
http://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/Common18650comparator.php
Pull up the NCR18650B protected and unprotected and compare at 3 and 5 amps. The unprotected maintains a higher voltage.
Awesome i love this forum, thanks guys
I can predict that UF batteries are the most “faked” ones being sold all over the world ?
Anybody think that too ?
Here's HKJs review that tests the same cells directly from Ultrafire and two vendors. Spoiler alert, they're all rubbish.