Just ordered some Grey Trustfires, how bad will they be?

The DX SKU is 19770

Have anyone had any experience with them?

I won’t be using them for any intense high current flashlight, perhaps just to keep our USB devices juiced up in a 4P configuration :slight_smile:

1900-2000mAh.

2 years ago these were quite consistent batteries, I measured 100-120 mOhm internal resistance and 1800-2000mAh on every cells. But a half years ago in my last order, I got definitely worse batteries, the capacity remained, but the internal resistance gone up to 200mOhm on some of them. One more note, these cells wear out very quickly on high discharge current.

About two years ago I have got two of these. One was leaking after about three months and then going to the recycling bin. The other one is still working. It does a light duty in a Q5 zoomie, that I don’t use often. I tried to use it in a mildly driven XML light. Well, it didn’t work, because the protection kicked in immediately.

Oh dear, if only I got them earlier!

Does anyone know if DX went for another supplier of fake batteries, or perhaps if other sellers will do better?

You should have ordered gray Ulrafire 2400mAh from Dinodirect, with PCB

DX SKU 19770 are uprotected.

My 2 months old cells have 1930 and 1970mAh capacity

You got from the same SKU also? Thanks for that, 19xx mAh is something I can probably live with for my needs :slight_smile:

Same SKU yes.

I have some grey Ultrafire 17670 that I use a pair in low draw XRE weapon mount light. They are a couple years old I charge them about every 3 months and they are still working fine.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/ultrafire-3-7v-1800mah-lc-17670-protected-battery-2-pack-3301?item=30

of these were the first 18650’s i bought. it was quite a while ago, and i’ve read several places that they may not be as good anymore, but the ones i have are very good, very similar to the tf flames and i have no complaints about them at all. for high drain applications though there are better choices now, though they are a little more expensive.

Mine is protected, so I have got another SKU, but it’s a gray one anyway.

I keep three of these in my backpack for charging my phone. Capacity is good but like everybody said, they can’t handle high current. I never charge my phone any other way so these have been charged many times and are still getting the job done.

how do you measure a battery’s internal resistance?

here you can see:
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/6753

Just as another poster said, gray (or silver) ultrafires/trustfires used to be fine. Well, maybe not fine but “okay” for a Chinese li-ion battery. Especially for 14500 lights. The 14500 TF flamers protection circuit — for me — shut off when it shouldn’t, so I used TF grays for most of my 14500 lights. Without incident. Maybe one dubious one outta 15, which is off-the-chart amazing for any industrial product made in China.

Then about 6 months ago, they got weird and very inconsistent in quality. Slowly at first. I started returning 25% of the order; then 50% and finally the whole order. I tried different vendors. Same bad batts. In fact, I think many vendors NOW are aware of the quality drop. Or maybe it’s my imagination? I know that after some TF gray batt returns to one big ebay vendor, he stopped selling them altogether.

The weirdness: Some new ones were too long to fit in any known production flashlight and some were also too big widthwise. Some lasted literally like 5 minutes before shutting down. Some were DOA. In fact the final straw were two 8-cell orders where the batts were too big to fit in any light OR just lasted for a few minutes. And of course the protection circuit was funky. My ke-5 and two-batt lights would shut down immediately with these batts.

My old UF/TF grays are still going strong. The newer grays that I kept are now dying in just a few months. :frowning:

So, it will be interesting to see what your new silver 18650s are like! Please post your results.

The Chinese battery situation is getting really bad. My last big order: HALF of the TFFs were fakes and only worked in some lights. The bad ones even had holographic lettering. But the fakes did NOT have the separate hologram on the outside of the two-battery cello packs. Same symptoms of the UF gray battery decline: Batts were too long, too wide and had short charge lives and funky protection circuits.

Okay. I suppose this is finally the bit that makes it enough for me to justify a hobby charger so I can do some discharge testing. Will post the results when everything is here.