A lot of flashlights use standard size Li-Ion batteries: e.g. 21700, 18650, 16340. Makers often include their own brand with the light.
But when I look for spares, there is real range of brands and prices…
Could someone briefly summarise what makes sense, as in is there a budget brand that mostly works or perhaps always buy the OEM batteries, or something else that is simple to understand…? Cheers!
Good question.
The batteries that come with, say a Wurkkos light are not made by Wurkkos. They are what is known as rewrap batteries. In other words batteries from other brands that have been rewrapped by Wurkkos and have the Wurkkos name. A practice that is completely acceptable in this industry.
Generally speaking the batteries that may have come with your light are so so. They work but you can do a lot better.
The brands that people on BLF seem to like are LG, Samsung, Molicel, and some others.
You can continue to use the batteries that came with your light but you will find upgrading will be totally worth it.
Most important is to get cells from a trustworthy source, generally not Amazon, eBay, temu, banggood, Aliexpress*
*Some specific sellers are more trustworthy.
This thread is a tad old but still has good info.
Good point, my number one go to place is:
Would they ship to Thailand, and in general, is international shipping of small batteries difficult for any reason?
Yeah, many shipping services refuse to ship bare Li cells in general, or require extra fees and precautions for the seller.
I never asked.
I found these comparisons - not sure how dated. Probably old news for BLFers, but new to me:
https://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/CommonSmallIndividualTest%20UK.html
https://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/Common18650Summary%20UK.html
My opinion - unless you are pursuing something very specific, like maximum possible runtime or maximum possible FET turbo output - the only thing that really matters is that you get a battery which is not fake from some legitimate manufacturer. Even lower end stuff will do just fine and often makes sense for regular use, because it is cheaper.
Batteries from manufacturers like wurkkos are absolutely fine and in fact i’d call this ones above average. A lot of worse ones exist. Higher end manufacturers tend to use even better cells. So buying from flashlight manufacturers is pretty much a safe option, even if expensive one.
How to get cheaper but still good batteries depends a lot on where you live. For me aliexpress is pretty much the easiest (if not the only) way - local stores do sell batteries, even from OEMs like samsung or molicell, but they are like 10x the price.
So, i use " Vapcell Factory Store" (1084158). Higher end stuff tends to be quite expensive, but digging around for a bit you can find some decent deals. Just remember that it often makes sense to buy relatively large packages, small quantities, like 1-3 cells, tend to be quite expensive (presumably because of shipping). I recently got 20xP45B for ~$80, for example, which would be quite impossible locally.
Every category here has stickies or pinned subjects at the top. Read them. The battery ones are especially important. A “mini primer” is not doing you a service.
In Europe we got NKON which is usually selling great cells from Samsung, LG, Sony, Keepower and sometimes Vapcell for low prices.
Especially interesting are their repurposed cells, when they get hands on some large partially defective car or e-bike pack and rip the celle out. You can get 50% or more off for minor cosmetic damages and 0-10 cycle cells in that case.