I need help identifying capacity and brand of these cells. I got them from Lenovo battery packs but I didn't see anything that showed capcity.
The red ones are embossed with Sanyo UR18650FM M51A , and have a light blue insulator ring on top.
The other is green with "SE US18650GR T 8A123B23v"
and my other 18650 next to my recovered ones
They are Sony cells.
2200mAh capacity.
http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=6052
They will very likely be well down on that capacity, laptops are outright cruel to their batteries.
Thanks after looking at your link it looks like the 2 characters on the bottom line determines the version or something. Sony 18650 8A brings me to links of 2600mah versions like http://evva.en.ecplaza.net/catalog.asp?DirectoryID=202839&CatalogID=1249436 . I still can't find anything on the Sanyos .
The Sanyos - also very good cells but they will likely have had an extremely hard life
The M51A bit, I've no idea about.
"Sanyo UR18650FM M51A"
This cell has a green card insulator around the top button isn't it?
UR18650FM is Sanyo's main production 18650, it's 2600mah. Here's a mini datasheet - http://shop.battex.cz/pdf/1S1P-UR18650FM-K.pdf
All I can think is that the "M51A" part is a batch number or something like that.
I assume these are the cells that are in the new XTAR's
Don: Could you please explain why laptops are cruel to batteries and why the had an extremely hard life?
Pook: The Sanyo's have a light blue top.
I was going to use these in Battery packs with many in parallel in my HID and bike lights, do you think they would hold up?
and thanks for the help
Laptops run hot. Their batteries get hot. Very hot. This is a Bad Thing.
They pull serious current out of the cells - I have an old Vaio laptop that wants 120W from the cells - which is cruel.
They get stored fully charged and hot - and their chargers tend to over charge the cells.
Heat is bad for cells, heavy current draw is bad for cells. They get stored with fully charged cells that rarely get a chance to spill some charge - how often do most users run them on battery?
Not how cells ought to get treated. My 3 year old work (And everything else) laptop can barely boot before the battery gives out. My 5 year old Vaio can't get through a boot before the cells die.
Wow! That's a lot of li-ion batteries.
Yes , I love my li-ion cells , now all I need is to find a decent hobby charger to tend to them as the trustfire tr-001 aren't cutting it.
Indeed...It looks like you have competition:P
He's waaaaaay ahead of me when it comes to li-ion batteries.
I think you'll need several chargers. 
Definitely Sony 2200mAh. Pretty popular in mainstream HP laptops. Thats where my identical ones came from.
Be sure to grind off the tabs leftovers or you might damage flashlights if the intended use is that.
My samples have still around 2000mAh capacity but are really inadequate to power a good driven XM-L.
Beware to not overdischarge them.
Take this one
http://www.xtarlight.com/en/05-chanpin/p-001-1.asp?styleid=69
IS there something wrong with the TR-001 model? I have had mine for a couple of months and am pretty happy with it. I know there is probably better out there, but is it still decent?
I just receive from a friend a old laptop battery and I find 6 sony green 18650 in good shape and good voltage… I find the mha capacity in this thread…
By the way, this is a BIG 18650 collection… Congrats…
Charger??? I think that you need a couples of XTAR WP6, I think that I am going to buy one of these. 33.80$ shipped from USA in ebay…
I've found that a good test for laptop cells is to test the voltage during salvage. Anything under 2.8 gets gone. Those that make the cut get charged to 4.20 and then set aside for 2 weeks. If they don't hold a charge when measured at 2 weeks out, they go in the junk bucket with those below 2.8. Generally, I find that if they hold 4.2-4.1 for two weeks they will likely be usable in single cell lights. I'll occasionally put a few on the hobby charger and see what the capacity is, but I have found that generally the ability to hold a charge is a pretty good predictor of which cells will also still hold most of their rated capacity.
I've salvaged a bunch of 18650's from dead laptop packs. In every single case an AW or TF flame out performs them hands down. Salvaged cells are good in a pinch, but do yourself a favor and invest in some good protected cells.