How do I know when it’s safe to use a high drain battery like This and if so can I use it in any 18650 light, I have usually only used 30qs in my lights like a D4 or fw3a but I want the max brightness and was wondering if these are safe to use in relation to the driver and LEDs not in terms of battery safeness because I can handle that
If you mean will it deliver too much power and damage something, idk, but I haven’t read a single report about a 35A battery doing damage just because it was too good.
Depends on the type of driver and type of LED. Constant current, buck and boost drivers you’re fine. FET based drivers are unregulated, so a high drain cell can damage an emitter.
What e1000 said.
If you want to eek out every bit of intensity/brightness from normal single 18650 non fet driver light that has a wide forward voltage light [say up to 8.4v] you can use 2 x 18350,s . Turbo brightness/intensity will stay more linear[and higher] right through until they need to be charged. Even the best single 18650 high drain will have less brightness on the second turbo blast and will be less every time turbo is used.
Sure 2 x 18350 wont have as much runtime but you will have higher initial and max linear brightness at all times.
As an example my olight m2x ut [mod xpg2 300000 plus cd] has only 75 percent lumens/intensity at 3.9 volts or under [loss of 75000 candela in this case] on a single high drain 18650. On a little thrower like this i much prefer every available lumen and sacrifice runtime.
I’d go with the P28A over the 26, Mooch’s testing shows the P26A only has a slight edge literally for the first few seconds at turn on after a charge, in all other instances the newer P28A excels and has slightly more capacity to boot (2600 vs 2800mAh).
I only run them in one light, my C8TT with triple LH351D W6’s, nothing else needs it / benefits from it.
I use the P26A in my both my D4’s, use to use it in FW3A as well. Got rid of the Al ones. Just order a copper one. Worked very well in both. Run times suffer of course. I am not always looking for max achievable brightness and find myself using LG MJ1’s in most lights. Lots of run time at 1000lumens or less. They are usually a bit pricey but they come up on sale sometimes. Lots of fakes on Ebay, Ali, etc. So I make sure I get em from IMR, Illumn, Liion, or Battery Junction.
I think IMR has the LG HG2’s on sale right now. $3.99 a piece. 2 battery minimum. https://www.imrbatteries.com/lg-hg2-18650-3000mah-20a-battery/
There will be very few cases where running a 30Q would be safe but a P26A wouldn’t be. You’d have to be pulling something like 15 amps at turn-on before you’d have a lot of difference, and it would have to be a difference where 20A versus 15A fries something, which is pretty uncommon. Most lights where someone says to use a “low drain” battery, they’re talking about a 35E instead of a 30Q, not a 30Q instead of a P26A.
Don’t worry about it. And unless you’re measuring lumens at turn-on, you’re probably better off with the 30Q. Up at those currents, the lumen difference is usually nearly impossible to discern by eye, mostly just extra heat, and you’re sacrificing runtime.