I have some of these from an Efest dealer china - they are not protected as far as i can make out, be safe either dispose of it safely or see if you can obtain a replacement or refund as you say they are new.
My preference would be to try to get a replacement, and hopefully it’ll work out, because, earlier, I got another bad battery (not an Efest, but a blue TR-18500) that he had already previously agreed to ship a replacement for.
Later, and thanks all,
Jim
P.S. Which Efest did you get, and how’d they work out? I kind of took a chance on these, but it was a U.S. seller, so I figured it’d be ok…
sure ask for a replacement, but you can still try to use the bad one
I use an old, dumb 270mA AA charger to revive, never had problem. But don’t mix it with other cells, only use it alone. It might suffer low capacity and high self discharge.
Understood, but I really am curious, as I’ve seen posts at various places about doing that (putting the “dead” battery in an NIMH charger). I do have an NIMH charger, but it only charges pairs of batteries, so I could do that anyway.
Thanks. The seller is working with me. I’m shipping the bad Efest 14500 plus a Trustfire (blue) 18500 that wouldn’t carry a load back to him, and he said that he’d replace both with some non-IMR protected batteries, but I kind of had the feeling that he’s not 100% convinced that both batteries are bad :(.
Hopefully, he’ll come through, but at this point, I just have to wait and see.
yes, the one I have tops the voltage to about 3,6V. The voltage rises quickly.
But I haven’t tried it with those chargers that charge pair only.
Basically any slow charger can be used. It only takes couple seconds to reach 3 volts and than it doesn’t matter much. Just don’t insert it in those 1amp chargers and such.
to sum it up:
I wouldn’t bother reviving some old recycled cell reading so low. But if its supposed to be a new cell, chances are it has degraded just a little and will work fine, just not 100%.
Most Sony cells are a different chemistry… for lithium-cobalt cells the chemistry can become unstable if they are discharged too far. If recharged they can spontaneously combust at any time in the future.