Got enough eneloops and LFP/LiFePO4 cells to last me probably forever (how many AA lights can a guy use at once, anyway?), wanted to try some Li 14500s just for s&g, and these popped up.
Amazon got ’em, other places like The New Egg got ’em, they’re generally favorably reviewed (not that it means much), but am curious if anyone here ever gave ’em a whirl.
I ordered an 8-pak, so I’m already committed. Worse comes to worse, if they don’t fare well after testing, I’ll bounce ’em back.
Recently bought 4. They come in a plastic carrying case and are exactly 50mm. I haven’t had time to run mine down and see how many mAh they charge up to, they came with a good amount of charge. They’re about 2mm shorter than a 850mAh Nitecore 14500. See pics
I have 4 of them. I don’t have a charger that can tell me the numbers yet. I did do a rundown test on 2 thorfires TG06S’s. Put fully charged fresh EBL’s in both of them, turned them on high and let em run until they got down to about 10 lumens or so. Took almost an hour and 15 minutes to get that dim. Battery voltage was at 2.81. Recharged them back up to 4.1 and they have been doing just fine. They maybe have 6 charge cycles on them by now. I’ll do another run down test tomorrow on them and see how they are holding up.
Hopefully when I get ’em I’ll put ’em through a torture test and see how they fare. As long as they’re not rewrapped HouseOnFire cells, and are at least close to the claimed 800mAH, I’ll be happy.
The LFPs that I got were claimed to be 600mAH but regged just a hair under 500mAH on my almighty Miboxer. ~490mAH or so.
So at least 750mAH would be what I’d expect, else I’ll p&m to the seller.
I picked up an 8 pack on Amazon. So far so good. I have no way of measuring drain, but did a capacity test on a single battery using a Zanflare C4 and got 840 mAh.
EDIT: My very first 18650s were EBLs. I bought them (with a charger) with an el-cheapo’ Ebay C8 head set— still working great after 6 years). They run today about 70% what they originally did (after being mostly sitting at 70% charge). But looking around lately as a flashaholic, I thought of them to be a decent, no frills option that maybe got within 80% of the advertised rating- on a good day.
So if these are HITTING spec- I’m buying a set!
Lightbringer… you’ll have to let us know how you do here after you run a few of these 14500s through one of your: almighty, bad-ass, wiz-bang battery torture devices.
I’m a bit new to this world but here’s my opinion.
If a company states a capacity and produces a product that matches those claims, it goes a long way to establish credibility. If they advertise something much higher but can’t deliver, then to me that already makes me wonder about what other claims they’re inflating or misrepresenting.
There’s also a factor of being realistic, if a capacity doesn’t seem to line up with competitors, there needs to be a good reason it’s so much better or worse. If 10 other manufacturers are making 14500 cells with similar dimensions and similar capacities, then there’s also more credibility that this product is at least within a good working range. The outliers worry me because if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Apart from this, in my research you really don’t know until someone takes these cells apart. You can do a exterior visual inspection to get an idea, but there are ways to hide flaws, and that still doesn’t tell you a whole lot about how something is made on the inside.
Thanks for the welcome! Does seem like a lot of smart people, I hope to contribute. Hey if you’re still posting then you’ve got at least 1 more test left in ya!