Highest (true) mAh per $

[baterija]

but 1000mAh is apparently some sort of sweet spot for super-crappy low end cells.

rhd- Thanks for almost making me spit my drink on my screen. Interesting test too.

[dno36]

@rhd

Hey all,

Here’s a rather neat update. I’ve kept on trucking along with the 18650 tests. Another dozen or so cells have come in, and have been put to the test. I got tired of updating the table, but I’ve been writing the true mAh on each cell after testing, and I may just line them up side to side and take some snapshots.

Anyway, here’s the neat gem / outlier. It’s a cell that looks like this (I blurred the seller’s eBay username watermark):

Here’s the remarkable part. It hit 2650 mAh, has protection, and cost $2.78 per cell, shipped. I’ve never seen 2650 mAh from such a cheap cell.

Here’s the funny part. I bought two cells at the same time. In fact, they came shrink wrapped to each other. The second cell, from the exact same pack, measured 1900 mAh.

Of course, the cell claims to be a ridiculous (impossible) 4350 mAh. Such a cell does not exist. In principal, one might be angry at the shortfall. In practice though, 2650 mAh from a sub-$3 cell is amazing. I’m actually fine with 1900 mAh too. But I think this really speaks to the lack of consistency and QC among cheapo cells. If a remarkable 2650 mAh cell is right next to a mediocre 1900 mAh (a ~30% variance in capacity), it’s a pretty strong indication hat these cells are basically all pulls from used laptop packs, with very little quality control or testing. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes it’s a wash.

Greetings rhd, nice job on this non-mainstream 18650 testing.

Many of us get these ‘cheapo’ batteries included with lights that we have purchased.
It is very handy to know what to expect out of one of these ‘included’ pieces, so we can determine where to best use our battery ‘assets’.

Personally, higher mAh batteries are more valuable to me because of runtime and consistent current flow, not to mention overall product quality and consistent performance.

Regarding the Ultrafires pictured above. Is it a bad or dangerous thing to have 2 batteries with different capacities in series, like your 2 subjects above??
If so, should we need to test each pair of our batteries before packing them into our Trustfire X8’s??

Cheers

[feilox]

1900+2650 = 4350. Makes perfect sense to me.

[OscarM]

Hey rhd, I’d like to see more of your results from testing cheap batteries, so I’d appreciate if you posted more of your test results. I also understand if you think it’s a bit too much work, but know that i would read and appreciate the work at least