The 14500s have seen something of a resurgence over the last 3-ish years, lots of new lights and some of them will allow a lot more juice to flow with a good cell. Several of these have been from Sofirn and Wurkkos, bundled with one of their average-performing 900mAh cells (who knows what the mfr is on those)…Lumintop FWAA probably set off the trend. The interest is probably there if it’s worth your time…but I also know that it’s an awful lot of time for each test and you aren’t charging admission! I think HJK’s hiatus may last a lot longer than any of us hoped.
On the grade A/B, it was in another thread here but Jon from Liion contributed some of his help and knowledge…and some of that must have come straight from Molicell. Sometime right around now is when he expected that they’d be receiving them (grade A).
You can also try finding the Shockli Orange 1050mah. Those perform at least as well as the Vapcell H10. They are both the best 14500 on the market.
I tested the Shockli Orange and compared it with a bunch of other 14500 cells in flashlights in this post. The Shockli Orange is the current KING of 14500 in this test
yea I’m aware of the Epoch P45B but there were some talk here about the Grade A only available in Taiwan but it’s supposed to arrive in the US in March. The rewraps that are sold here are supposed to be the Grade B. We don’t know what the differences are if any without an expert like yourself testing it but theoretically Grade A is better
I suspect, based on testing other cells, that the differences are small and perhaps even unnoticeable in “real world” use. I’m looking forward to testing these cells again when we can be sure Grade A cells are available.
Yeah, those were good (as I saw in tests anyway)…they appear to not be available anymore. I think the only places I saw them were at BG and Neal but the prices (for shipping to the US) were way higher than reasonable. Anymore I stick to buying cells from our various domestic sources (fakes are fewer these days but if you have a dud cell good luck with getting help from overseas sources, y’know?). Hopefully we see another quality high drain 14500 in the future. I’m stocked up on the H and L cells for a good long time but “we” do need cells like that.
I think for single cell use it’s probably no real difference, maybe not even for our small multi-cell applications…maybe a little less in terms of longer term shelf stability? It’ll be interesting to see your test!
I Always get excited when a new and better cell comes out or is about to come out. But the reality is I’m not going to notice any difference in terms of the output of my torch and very little if any difference in runtime.
But I’m still going to get some!
Jon( Liionwholesale) is awaiting them. I ask him about every week or so. So hopefully soon. Obviously they have no control over when these shipments get here. All the information he’s given me for months are just estimates.
I forgot to mention. Regardless of how little the cell is improved, I get it for the psychological advantage knowing that I have the best.
It might be a 150 additional lumens in 5000 Lumen:flashlight: . And it may be an additional 1.5 minutes of run time. But I’ll take it!
In fact with the Samsung 50S I got one and a half more minutes of cumulative Max run time with my Modified K1 compared to P42A and 40T. When the cumulative Max run time is only 9.5 or 10 minutes. That 1 and 1/2 minutes make a difference. At least to me it does.
When the first batch of P45B rewraps hit the market from other sellers (not molicel wrap) I simply mentioned that we had been informed that grade A was not available and that was why we didn’t have a version of that, because we specifically couldn’t get it in grade A. Even those cells are certainly possible to be grade A, maybe they snagged some preproduction batch or something, I can’t know. Now the internet has taken hold of that and speculated beyond what I said.
Thanks. I just bought 3 to feed my hungry lights with powerful Chinese LEDs. The shoot-out vs Nealsgadgets Lishen in my Nightwatch Chaos should be “illuminating.”
My delivery of 4x P45’s from Liionwholesale just came today (First time customer). All 4 were at exactly 3.54v. Running a capacity test currently. Afterwards I will put them head to head against the Epoch “P45B’s” and see how they fare in my Nightwatch NS73V2. Current record is 17,405 Lumens with the Epoch’s.
Update to my previous post:
I tested all 4x of the P45B’s from liionwholesale in my Nightwatch NS73V2 with my Lumen tube (measurement taken @ turn on. “initial brightness”).
My best result prior to today with the Epoch “P45B’s” from 18650batterystore: 17,405 Lumens.
Results with new P45B’s from liionwholesale (all charged to 4.24 volts on nitecore i4):
Battery 1: 16,649
Battery 2: 16,984
Battery 3: 17,207
Battery 4: 16,795
So, it looks like Battery 3 has the lowest internal resistance so far.
I’m very very surprised that none of them could beat my best result with the Epoch “P45B” with all the talk of them being no chance that they were “Grade A” cells. I even remember a forum member here said they spoke to 18650batterystore and they “confirmed” that they were “grade B” cells. The only thing that I can’t test is longevity or cycle life, but at least for “initial testing” in my results, the confirmed Grade A P45B cells from Liionwholesale (Authorized dealer for Molicel, so they get direct from their factory) are NO BETTER OR WORSE than the cells I purchased from 18650batterystore. Yes my results were better with the best Epoch, but it is well within the testing margin of error, so they are essentially the same cells, confirmed “Grade A” or not (minus cycle life since I can’t test that).
It makes me want to retest the Epochs to see if they still hold up today ( they are about 6 months old now).
I have 4x of the Epochs and never recorded all of the measurements, just the battery with the highest measurement (17,405 and 17,399).
The Epoch cells often go on sale for $7.75 and they ship from one state over from me, so my next order of Molicels will be from 18650batterystore when they go on sale. Unless liionwholesale sells them for cheaper lol.
I retested my Epoch “P45B” cells on my Nightwatch NS73V2. (all charged to 4.24 volts on nitecore i4)
Battery 1: 18,075L(wow, 2nd attempt 1 min later: 17,568)
Battery 2: 17,941L (2nd attempt 1 min later 17,785)
Battery 3: 17,323L (no 2nd attempt)
Battery 4: 17,988L (2nd attempt 1 min later 17,454)
After retesting I have more questions lol.
-It seems that the cells perform better after a few cycles for sure. (The Epochs have around 5 total full cycles now)
-The official P45B cells performed about the same as the Epochs 6 months ago when I first tested them.
-I expect the official P45B cells to improve in performance after 5 cycles like these Epochs did.
So currently, my Epochs (minus battery 3 lol) are my best performing cells for high current by a small margin. I wonder if it’ll change as i put cycles on the Molicels…
Interesting results! Again I have no idea what the situation is with Epoch cells, what grade they are, etc . But one thing to keep in mind is grade B isn’t necessarily talking about internal resistance. It could be that they have some other aspect with lower performance, like more self discharge, or even as simple as they were outliers for the batch.
Also internal resistance is affected by temperature so definitely be careful with temperature when running these tests. Running the test at the same time on cells that were sitting in the same room definitely will be important for good results.
Will be interesting to see if the Molicels catch up to the Epochs.
When you first get the cell they’ve probably been resting at storage voltage for weeks or months. It has often been said that NiMH cells perform better after a few cycles. It makes sense intuitively I think, if the chemicals in the cell become more active with use, think of how an unused lead acid car battery needs “tending” to keep it working properly long term. And possibly the electrical pathways become more formed, like what is said to happen with QTC material… However it happens, if it’s happening there should a measurable change in resistance before and after use.
