I completely agree, the battery is completely sealed and not visible to the user. It could be getting hot and you would never know.
“Better and faster” strongly depends on the light. My SP33S pushes 15W into the 26650, that’s the same as most bay chargers can deliver at most.
And better… LiIon charging is a very simple principle. Constant current until 4.2V, constant voltage from then on, until current dropped to 50-100 mA, then shut off. There’s 50ct Controllers that do this well. 1$ controllers that do this very well with 3A current.
I don’t care about IR, capacity, or any other metric. All I care about is if the cell works. And I trust every single one of my lights with internal charger completely to do that.
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Yeah, I understand, was just correcting some inaccurate statements. I will offer that I used to use a USB tester to charge through, which alleviated my concerns when I first started using USB by being able to see what current was going into the charge circuit, but after doing that for a while, I guess I’m too comfortable with it, maybe. My batteries see much more abuse when I’m using them than when I’m charging them.
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I have a few (2-4) spare batteries that I store fully charged.
I remove the battery from the light when its voltage gets below 3.6V, and insert a previously charged battery.
I then charge the low battery, and put it into my box of spare batteries.
I dont use the built in USB charging in a battery, I just put the battery into my charger.
otoh, If I gift a light, I choose one w built in charging, or with a battery that has USB built in.
If a light of mine has a USB port I will almost always charge the cell(s) using the onboard charger.
Sure, I cannot use that light while it is being charged, however, I do own more than one light.
I do check the cell voltage after the first use of a built-in charger. I’ve never had one go over the 4.2 volts. Most of the time they cease charging at 4.1n which is fine.
As for a USB chartered light being a potential pipe bomb, I don’t think that is a realistic danger. If a cell did start to vent the pressure would blow out the USB port hole or the switch boot. Someone, I don’t recall who, did a destructive test a long way back. They took a tube light and rigged it to have a dead short across the cell somehow. The cell overheated in the light, vented and caught fire. It was more like a road flare with fire and smoke venting out the switch end, IIRC. No explosion.
I don’t need to make use of all the other features that my enthusiast charger offers every time I charge. If I am curious about the capacity or something else I can use the stand-alone charger at that time.
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Nyogel solves this problem 
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I thought when it came to batteries, slower charging is better (for the battery.)
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Yeah, that’s a big reason I don’t use built in a lot, a lot of them are hard on the battery by charging at 2 or 3 A when in general I have the time, so I’m going to use 1A with a dedicated charger, or 500mA for small batteries.
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If you’re going through multiple batteries per outing then a dedicated charger makes sense over usb charging. If not the light can be recharged after use. Besides, who here doesn’t have a dozen or more lights ready to go while one charges?
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Yeh, that’s why I pretty much don’t use my real Q8, with its warmer floodier beam, but use my DC7 instead, despite its colder throwier beam. Convenience of using its charger wins out every time.
I have one flashlight from Ledlenser which have a battery pack with 2 26650, there´s no other possibility to charge it.
For the rest I use my external chargers
I’m curious how you all charge your cell phones and laptops 
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And how you are charging power tools? Are you using non removable batt in the woods ? 
Im not talking about back yard camping here.
You can actually buy removable batteries for your lights with USB charging!
But you can’t (easily) use a fancy charger that lets you customize charge parameters with your power tools, which seems to be the main complaint with USB lights… So yes, I’m “curious” how y’all are charging your power tools too lol
Maybe I assumed a thread on budgetlightforum asking about if I use built in charging was being specific to lights…
That question was also posted on Budget Powertool Forum.
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Well, my drill and impact do have a white LED on them, I guess…
Kinda, but tbh I would rather buy a new battery every 5 years instead of every 7 years, and get faster charging in return. On a 26650, 3A is still ~0.5C, which is very gentle.
What damages batteries the most is being stored for extended periods at 100%, so fully charging and then not using the light for a while since we have way more than we actually use day by day.
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guilty as charged
what kind of damage should I expect to see
and what is considered extended time before I reach for a previously charged battery?
A month? Or how long is considered extended storage?
Ive been charging and rotating my batteries for years… using an Olight UC charger… Should I buy an analyzing charger (which one?) to figure out which of my batteries are damaged?
I have never had a battery overheat and vent with fire.
My only battery mishaps have been a couple of times when I used an unprotected battery (imr or inr 18350) in an unprotected light (RRT-01) too long, and overdischarged it.
Since I always check voltage before recharging, I caught those two mishaps and took them to recycling.
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90% of the time I use a dedicated charger. I have lots of cells, so changing a cell is much quicker than tying up the light to wait an hour or more for USB charging to finish. I do trust my MC3000 to be nicer to the cell and charge to the parameters that I set reliably. I think the onboard charging circuits are all over the place in quality. Several I have over charge and/or charge at a higher rate than what I like. OTH some are just too damn slow.
Occasionally I use USB charging, but not when I have access to one of my several dedicated chargers and my stock of charged cells ready to go.