Test/Review of UltraFire BRC18650 3000mAh (Red-silver) 2015

UltraFire BRC18650 3000mAh (Red-silver) 2015



Official specifications:

  • Material: Li-ion Battery
  • Suitable for Flashlight Torch
  • Capacity: 3000mAh
  • Voltage: 3.7V





A cheap battery with very low capacity. The above list of capacity is a bit misleading, see below.



Here I have the capacity for each cell, one has 1600mAh, the other 350mAh and neither can deliver much current.











Very bad curves, different capacity for the two cells and very sensitive to load.









They could only handle a 10 watt load for less than a minute.





When charging notice the huge voltage drop, the best cell drops 0.1 volt, the other 0.2 volt when charging stops.



Conclusion

This is bad cells, stay away. Check the link below for more information about it.



Notes and links

I disassembled the battery to see whats inside

How is the test done and how to read the charts
How is a protected LiIon battery constructed
More about button top and flat top batteries
Compare to 18650 and other batteries

“This is bad cells”? How about, “These are, bad cells” :bigsmile:
Great review BTW, thank you. Before I knew any better, I bought 4 of these with exactly the same results you posted above. Their crap.

Can’t believe you wasted your time on this :open_mouth: but it should probably be pinned as #1 thread in 18650 batteries section for all beginners that are convinced they have 4800mAh cells… :wink:

Foot in your mouth.

“Their crap”
How about they are crap?

How would (new) people know they are bad cell without a test?

The disassembly thread would probably be better to pin, it shows why they are crap.

Thanks for testing HKJ! Have you implemented the “skull” verdict in the battery reviews yet? :wink:

Kind regards

In that case you would have to destroy/disassemble one or some quality cells so you could make comparison and say something like:
“this is crap cell, look what’s inside …. and this is good quality cell, notice how it looks inside…”
all followed by pictures that beginners could compare for obvious differences…
On other hand this graph says it all :smiley:

Not really, when a cell is corroded and has marks from welding of battery pack strips, you do not really need more.

I will probably disassemble some good cells at a later date.

Funny that the 3000mAh wrapper is still around since you can get that and/or more quality as well as capacity from reputable brands :D

49% of the reviews on this Amazon site this gave the batteries a 5 star rating. I wonder how many of them are shills? Or is it “if it lights then the batteries are great” mentality?

Frighteningly enough

Most people are just not aware that they have been blatantly misled and lied to. Pretty much like 99% of everything that we buy from there. They can do anything they want, they are exempt from us law. And boy oh boy, do they ever run with it. :Sp

NOTICE: To everyone who reads this review and

has other learned knowledge about the *Fire

battery crap and lies. Please pass your info on to

people that have NO knowledge of the B.S. regarding

the *Fire batteries brands. In other words , this

means-“Stop the robbery and theft !” . Every chance

you get , Spread the word !!

One of the guys I work with brought in a Trustfire light with a Ultrafire BRC 4800mah battery. I sent him some articles on how dangerous they were and he immediately tossed it. I gave him some Sanyo laptop pulls (measured at about 2000mah) and he was totally amazed at the increased runtime. Another guy had a Ultrafire 14500 in his sk68 that had a runtime of about 5 minutes. I tested it at home and it measured out at 100mah. Gave him an A&W I had lying around and he was also impressed by the increased runtime.

Both are technical guys (a DBA and a network engineer) so luckily they were open to articles and reasoning. Took less than 5 minutes for them to see the light (pun intended :laughing:

My 2 good deeds this year.

I already advised peoples stay away from any Ultrafire batteries many years ago. They are extremely dangerous!
Unfortunately I lost the link for how these batteries exploded & this guy went to ER eventually!
I found the link: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?280909-Ultrafire-18650-3000mA-exploded

I sure hope someone at Tesla sees this. They can cut-down on the number of cells they need by 1/3. I bet it also sags less and has a longer cycle life. I see on one site that 9 sucker buyers have already jumped on it.

Can someone explain to me how they do this to people they do not even know? What kind of people are these? Its quite disturbing.

There is a very small decimal point ..... you just have to look very very closely

980.0 mAh

98.00 mAh

9.800 mAh

.9800 mAh

?????

Awesome review! I’m happy I never wasted any money on these cells because I spent a lot of time on this forum before spending any money on 18650’s.