I just bought a few KeepPower 850 mAh 16340 cells. Noticed two problems immediately:
1, They are not in standard size. They are a tad bit wider and longer than standard 16340s. They still will fit my On The Road lights, albeit a very tight, scratching fit.
2, They seem to be low-drain cells. When used, some lights will not activate Turbo mode, others will shut down completely whenever attempted to use Turbo.
Is this normal?
Edit: Just checked again: They’re protected cells. No wonder.
If they’re protected cells, then that sounds normal.
The PCB from the protection circuit, the strip connecting the ends of the cell, and the double heat shrink will all contribute to increased size of the cell.
And many protection circuits will trip at higher currents, so they cannot be used with Turbo mode in lights that draw a lot of power.
Another reason this could happen is that once turbo is triggered the current is so high the cell can’t keep up and the voltage sags below what is preprogrammed in the driver for cut off voltage of turbo.
This use to be the problem with using cheap cells like trustfire. A few years back a 18650 trustfire could not even hold above 3v with a 3amp load applied.
The 16340 cells use to be pretty weak but there has been several improvements in this size cell. I like the Vapecell 16340’s, they perform quite well from my testing and they seem to be the first to bring better cells to the market. Part of that was at the request of members here.
The Vapecell work very well — If you take the protection circuit off of the KeepPower they work pretty good also — I bought the higher capacity ones and stripped that circuit off— The Vapecell I have are 800 mah