Who makes the highest capacity 18650 batteries? I have RX brand panasonic cells rated at 3400mah. I’ve seen 4000mah batteries advertised but not sure if they’re legit.
Check these:
So about 3500mah then? Not much different to the ones I have. I was more curious if the 4000mah ones are real, that would actually make for a noticeable difference in runtime.
3500mAh for decent/brand name 18650 batteries is top. Most of those won’t quite meet that spec under testing, but they’ll get close.
Any claims of capacity larger than that are not legit. Often, the higher the claim, the worse the battery>phony/counterfeit/crap.
You want/need more capacity, you need to get physically larger batteries, or run cells in parallel.
Batteries with Ridiculous ratings: Batteries with Ridiculous Ratings
Runtime depends on a lot of things. If you are driving a light hard with high lumen output, i.e. pulling a lot of amps from the battery. Then a higher performance lower capacity may well give better runtimes. In fact it is almost guaranteed in most cases.
This is because high capacity is gained by trading performance. But if you push these batteries hard, they will suffer much more voltage sag and basically run flat sooner.
On the flip side, if you are mostly only using Moonlight or low modes with low amp draws, then yes, highest capacity is likely to give longer runtimes.
I’ve personally found Samsung 30Q’s to be brilliant.
https://18650.uk/product/samsung-30q-18650-battery/
And in the types I lights I run, I’m willing to wager they’d perform better than most/all 3500mAh ones.
4000mah are NOT real, no different than 9000mah, both fake