Massive fraud on 18650s in the Littokala Aliexpress stores!

With Opus BT - C3100 charger. But don’t remember the current. At what current should I discharge?

BlueSwordM, thank you for the link. In their Aliexpress store, they list with no delivery to Turkey. I am trying to get in touch with them.

thanks for the link blueswordm

@mechanik, strange.

They are using FedEx shipping, so it should not be a problem shipping internationally.

@kat, you need to discharge at higher currents, like 1A, or 2A, meaning you need a dedicated discharger.

BlueSwordM, even fastech says shipping unavailable for Turkey so it seems aliexpress is my only source and it is better getting cells with Bpost, it cost only 5 usd for 10pcs NCR18650GA from aliya store, thanks to you i have known this seller. They told me they never sell fake batteries.

Have you bought from them and did a discharge test at higher amps ?

I have been looking at ‘’Second Life Storage & Solar thunderheart’s reviews. He talks about charging with standart current which means 1.6A for NCR18650B batteries.
I have tried it with my charger and i can only get 3200mah with 1.6A Discharge if only i charge my batteries (from liitokala stores) with 0.5A and i read 84mOhm internal resistance so i am sure these cells are not original. I have original NCR18650Bs with 32mohm IR and they are 3 years old i guess. meausered with same icharger 3010B.

I will do further testing with stronger contacts as ’‘

’’ mentioned. Will see if it makes any difference.

84mOhm AC resistance is very high for NCR18650Bs, especially new.

And Thunderheart is a well known member at DIYPowerwalls, and he can be trusted.

QueenBatteries should therefore have no problem supplying with legit 18650/26650s, etc.

Aliya’s Battery Store is a legitimate store, and I have actually tested the capacity and internal resistance of Samsung 30Qs and NCR18650GAs.

Weight test: Massive post on where to get lithium-ion batteries everywhere in the world! Look at Post 2-5 for info, And Canada Post 123 - #48 by BlueSwordM

Capacity test: Massive post on where to get lithium-ion batteries everywhere in the world! Look at Post 2-5 for info, And Canada Post 123 - #53 by BlueSwordM

Internal resistance test: Massive post on where to get lithium-ion batteries everywhere in the world! Look at Post 2-5 for info, And Canada Post 123 - #61 by BlueSwordM

mechanik take a good look here too: Lucky Electronics Store @ AliExpress

Similar to Aliya.

A friend of me just submitted me a cell link from this page, it may be of interest for buying in bulk: https://www.made-in-china.com

Cheers ^:)

Thanks for the all tips and sharing your experiences. i should have read your previous posts carefully. sorry for letting you repeat yourself.

Thank you so much for the link. I am gonna buy both Lucky’ and Aliya store’s batteries. Lucky E. store sells cheaper, i doubt it is because of the slow shipping. I am ordering for testing purpose first.

You guys made me save a lot of time on my project. Thanks.

Do you also know an honest place for NCR18650G 3600mah panasonics ? According to thunderheart these cells are 278.5 Wh/kg @0.69A constant discharge. I’ve calculated the value from his graph here;

Each cell has a weight of 46.39grams.

@mechanik (and everyone else)

I bought some NCR18650GA on ebay.

They have already been released by customs and are in possession of postal logistics.
I expected to receive them today but it will not be possible anymore.
Now I have to wait more than a week because during the Holy Week (Tourism Week for my country) the government employees do not work.

They are not very cheap but it is a seller that sends to my country.
Until now I could only buy on Aliexpress.
The seller resides in Serbia.

When I receive them, I will do the rigor tests and publish the results.

You can study the options while the batteries arrive to me…
https://www.ebay.com/str/telitpower

I purchased an Lii-500 Engineer charger and a LiitoKala Lii-50A 26650 during the recent Anniversary Sale at AliExpress, 3/28 thru 4/1.

I purchased from the “liitokala Official Store”, currently reachable through links here and here. The store claims an opening date of January, 2013 and has an AE store number of 217753. It has a rating of 98.7%, which though imperfect, is an acceptable rating for a store that’s been open for 6 years.

I received these items packaged together only 18 days after purchase to the United States, which is, by far, the fastest delivery I’ve experienced from AliExpress. The items appear to be packaged in factory boxes and the charger included all accessories and documentation.

The 26650 cell has been cycled and reported a capacity of 5436mAh. Though somewhat higher than HKJ’s “Black” test, it’s in line with many other owners when using the Lii-500 charger for testing. I cannot perform any high-current tests, but the charger reports an internal resistance averaging 27mOhm, which is also similar to other measurements of these cells with this charger.

I’ve also found that some of the “fake” stores linked in this thread have been shut down and the links now forward to store 217753. I have no insider information and am simply reporting my opinion from watching this store for the past few months and ordering a package of LiitoKala-branded items from them.

I would not purchase other brands of 18650’s from random “liitokala” stores and perhaps not even from this one - the risks outweigh the savings - but I do believe that this particular store is a genuine LiitoKala supplier, if not the factory store itself.

I still wouldn’t order from them IMO.

It’s fine to buy their chargers, but supporting their legitimate cell business is also supporting the fraud that they are doing on the 18650 side.

Yes, I browsed the store and confirmed that store 217753 is indeed selling the fake 18650’s. There have been so many stores claiming the LiitoKala name that it’s difficult to keep track.

Update.

The batteries are genuine, but they are 2 year old (code date: 7216).
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Battery-PANASONIC-Li-Ion-3-6V-3450mAh-NCR18650GA/163424424473

Telitpower will be my new provider.

The next will be (next month): https://www.ebay.com/itm/Battery-SAMSUNG-Li-Ion-3-6V-3500mAh-INR18650-35E/163397766612

All came with 3.54V and weighed between 47.6 and 47.4g.

Does this charger meausure charged capacity or discharged capacity ?
How accurate its IR readings ?

Thank you Unloco,
I have ordered from lucky E. store, turned out it is same store with Aliya store, they are selling from 2 different store. i will test their battery and share the results here too. currently testing Littokala and GTF batteries i had … suprisingly some of them shows results same as originals.

CHG 1.6A, DCHG 4.5A, Capacity around 3170 mah but some of them , you just cant get more than 2300.

So, i have a question to you guys, is there such thing like cycling batteries at low amps can increase their capacity ? (i know Nimh or NiCd batteries have ‘’memory effect things’’ never heard such things for lipos or li-ions)

i am having hard time to figure out why some of the batteries i get from littokala or GTF store are performing better now…

Edit Store links here, i have got batteries from these sellers some of them are still on the way;

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/GTF-100-Original-3-7V-3400mAH-18650-Lithium-Rechargeable-Battery-NCR18650B-Li-ion-Cells-For-Panasonic/32931029532.html

mechanik, the Lii-500 measures both charged capacity (FAST test) and discharged capacity (NORmal test).

Their internal resistance measurements are quite inaccurate and of course they're affected or influenced by largely variable rail resistances which I advice to keep minimized in any case. This is really not much different to what happens with other analyzing chargers, though.

I use the power on internal resistance measurements to make sure the cells are well seated in the rails, just that.

Thank you for the tips barkuti.

I added some NoClean fluid flux and apllied some heat with soldering iron and i got consistent readings from my fresh lii-500 too. I just received today.

What i am talking about the capacity is still unknown to me. it seems i am not alone on this too;

IR readings are pretty worthless with practically all analyzing chargers, but I was indeed reporting the discharge capacity. The Lii-500 calls this a “NOR” or normal test.

Hi all

I’m new here and was wondering something.
What are brands Varicore and littokala compared to Panasonic, Samsung and LG?
Isn’t NCR18650B a Panasonic product? What is a Littokala NCR18650B?

Yes.

Who knows? Could be anything. Littokala is just a brand name, they don’t produce their own cells. Don’t assume that just because they name it the same as Panasonic, that it really is a Panasonic you’re getting.