I went to find a battery for it and was surprised that I didn’t have any 16340’s. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t purchased any 16340 flashlights since returning to this avocation. So, I went rummaging around my old collection and pulled out these batteries:
It’s been at least 6-1/2 years since these batteries were last touched.
I put the 16340’s in my D2 charger and they registered between 2.2V and 3.8V. Because of the age of these cells, I set the charging level at 300mA/hr. The one showing an initial charge of 2.2V rapidly advanced from 2.2V to 3.1V (say withn a half a minute), before settling down and charging normally. The other 16340’s charged up and terminated normally.
And when I placed the 18650 battery into the charger, it initially read an astounding 4.02V. It took a couple of minutes before I could find my camera to take the following picture:
I have few of the AW 16340 protected cells since 2011/12 and they still keep the juice and still powering my Olight S1 Baton and SWM M11R.
That’s why for Li-Ion cells other than 18650, I’ll try to get AW first
Have lots of cells 7 or 8 years old and some over 10 years old. Some name brand and some no name brands. All the name brand batteries still work properly, even the 10 year old ones. Have thrown away very few no name batteries.
Weird, i threw away (responsibly recycled) half a dozen 4 year old laptop pull cells because they were heating up like crazy upon charging and had lost over 40% of their capacity. They were Sanyo purple ring cells.
I think the OP should capacity test these batteries.
i have some original laptop pulls that came out of an old HP laptop that was manufactured in 2004, making the cells 12 years old. They still charge full with no problems, barely warm up, and still tested between 80 to 90 % of their rated capacity, still tested with low internal resistance. I use them in low drain lights and lanterns quite often. good quality LiIon cells can last a long time as long as they were never abused or used hard.
In my experience with li-ion cells, what matters most is not the age of the cell, but what kind of life it lived before. Notoriously harsh to cells are the ones coming from laptop packs that were used on a daily basis.
I have opened laptop packs with cells perhaps with 10-yr old cells year ago but still going strong up to this day. Maybe those packs came from laptops that got dropped and went out of commission.
I don’t throw these away (except really unusable ones). My older batteries serve as always-on nightlights. Soldered resistor and chinese LED on the side - gives usable moonlight 24/7 and lasts a good 3months per charge.
