Battery Vendor Choices _ China vs USA

I just ordered a BLF A6 and need to get some batteries
I saw some of the vendors recommended here and was thinking of ordering batteries from either GearBest or Mtnelectronics.
I wanted to ask advice here first.

It appears that GearBest is located in China, and is much cheaper. Does anyone have any advice dealing with GearBest? Can I be confident their batteries are genuine? How long should I expect for the shipping to take? I have working batteries so I dont mind waiting awhile, but I dont want to risk getting conterfeit batteries. On the other hand, Mtnelectronics is in the USA and their feedback is good. Just wondering if saving 50% is worth the risk.

Thanks for the feedback!

Gearbest has particularly crappy packaging procedures for Liion cells, that they haven't bothered to change for quite some time. If you're okay with waiting a while and potentially being thrown through hoops if something goes wrong then do it.

Just avoid the "AWT Style" and all Ultrafire/untested cells.

I was planning on getting either Samsung or Panasonic. I am aware of the xxxxfire problem but Im not sure what “AWT” means.

Samsung/Panasonic you should be fine.

AWT Style is just a particular battery they sell. It's basically trying to trick people who don't have a lot of knowledge on the subject into buying it. Kind of like many EBay/Amazon sellers do with "like" Otterbox/Lifeproof replacement parts or Genuine "OEM replacement" (Aftermarket) for car parts. It's not actually genuine AWT (Battery Brand) it just looks like it.

I recently purchased a couple of Panasonic 18660’s from Gearbest, packaged sufficiently and arrived safe and well.

For all the stuff I buy from GearBest, I usually buy batteries from USA sellers like Amazon or Ilumn. I’ve had some decent deals from an Amazon seller DoingOutdoor but the prices fluctuate so much. I just like the Prime 2 day shipping and knowing I can put them right back in the box and send them back with no fuss.

Chinese sellers like GB are OK but there was a customs flap for a while there, and people were having orders disappear, so I just switched to US sellers then and haven’t really switched back. I think everyone’s getting their orders now?

I still put them in the analyzing charger wherever they arrive from :slight_smile:

i received 4x sanyo 2600mah from gearbest yesterday. they were packaged in a plastic zip-bag and for once wasn’t rattling around. might be because I actually bought 4x batteries, not 2x2 batteries or 4x1 battery.
I have bought LG/Keeppower/panasonic/sanyo/samsung/sony batteries from gearbest (and banggood/fasttech/wallbuys) and received genuine batteries.
trustfire and ultrafire batteries that i bought several years ago might have been waste of money though :bigsmile:

How many batteries are you buying? If you are only buying a couple then it really does not matter where you are getting them because any price difference is negligible. It all depends on what is more important to you but since you are new here and stateside....buy from Mountain or Illuminations....at least until you learn your way around.