I ’m not an expert on charging electronics but once I opened the driver I will make pictures, it may use a known and decent charging chip.
With batteries directly connected parallel it does not use balancing charging, monitoring each individual cell, my question is: how bad is that?
Even IF a pricey name brand excellent charging chip was used, it’s still charging 3 cells in parallel that may be imbalanced and will almost assuredly become so at some point in the flashlights life. I sure wouldn’t use it. I remove those and plug the USB charging port with silicone to seal it up. I like my fingers on my hands and I like to be able to see… consider myself to be a compassionate person and don’t want to deprive anyone else of their senses either, Lord knows there’s far too many folks actually running around not using much sense these days…
Simple scenario, and we’ve had someone in the forum recently talking about how they do this… a 2200mAh store brand protected cell get’s put in the light alongside a high discharge 30Q and a 3500mA high capacity cell. All three of these, side by side, charge simultaneously from the same charging circuit. Hmmmm, yeah, I don’t think that’s a great idea! A lot of folks take chances daily that I’m simply not willing to take at all. I reckon Justin said it best when he said “It is what it is…” Still, I’ll stay well and clear away from that mess, thank you very much!
(Remember, you never know what someone else may have put in a light when they’re using it right beside YOU! Or in your building, at work, at the store, at the movies or in the mall, so simple for someone else’s error to become your life, or your loved ones…)
[I know someone that recently had a cell vent, scary scenario!]
Not bad at all. One parallel group of cells works as a giant group, so no problem there.
The only thing needed is temperature monitoring here, and a reverse polarity protection circuit for obvious reasons, physical, or electronic if possible.
E: I have to add something.
Different capacity+internal resistance cells in a parallel circuit is not too bad, since they will just be charging at different rates and will be equalized at the same voltage at the same rate.
The thing you do not want is putting different voltage cells in parallel. It won’t do much damage if the delta is less than 0,1V, but beyond that, it gets dangerous for the cells mostly.
UPDATE
Do not listen to my advice unless you have a multimeter and battery knowledge! It is advanced knowledge 
Keep a matched set of batteries for one large multi-cell light, and keep them at the same charge level when putting it inside the light.
And for what it’s worth, I had 4 LG HE4’s, pretty new, in a Nitecore TM16 this past year, a matched set from the beginning, and one day one of the 4 was stone dead! The other three were holding their charge and seemed fine, that one cell wouldn’t charge and my chargers wouldn’t recognize it as a cell… is it really safe to charge up those parallel cells on a single circuit if one cell is that much off from the others? I mean, it didn’t just get dead all of a sudden, did it? We get lax, day in day out, don’t we?
Preach it Blue, but it goes against everything we’ve practiced here for the past 6 years. Stay away from me and mine if you do that, I want no part in it…
No problem.
You want matched cells obviously. I’m just saying it’s not dangerous for someone like me and you
I wouldn’t have too much confidence in someone else putting a laptop cell at 3,6V and 2 fully charged 30Qs. Now that would be a nice combo, and a dead laptop cell
Any chance to have the illuminated side button in a different color to keep it a little different than the Q8?
Yeah. Let’s make it orange 
The problem here, Blue, is that you’re trying to address the few dedicated flashaholics in a room consisting of 26,663 people. Only 58 members were logged in as of a few minutes ago, but we do have 26,663 members… you have to be careful the advice you spread, thousands of new people will take it for gospel and never check the voltage in their cells, don’t even have a multimeter. . . .
Any change to have SS bezel on this SP36 ?
Dale, your concerns are mostly valid for all flashlights with parallel cells, with or without charging, like the Q8. Not everyone must be given a Q8. The question here is if the parallel charging part adds extra danger to that.
What we, based on assumptions, have been doing the past 6 years has, after actual testing, more than once been proven unneccessary or even wrong. Knowledge develops over the years.
I would like as much input as possible before dismissing this quite useful feature.
Then what about those Imalent and Acebeam battery packs that consist of multiple cells in the DX80, MS12, X65, etc.
Was thinking about that too and my conclusion was that is surely looks good but it also makes this light look more like similar lights like the ROT66, not sure if that is good.
That’s worse.
While in parallel, we have the problem with parallel differential voltage cell balancing, with series packs, we have to be careful of cell age, internal resistance, capacity.
We also have to install a capable BMS, and most importantly, we have to prevent polarity inversion of a cell.
How about blue or violet?
Violet or orange would be good. Too many green and blue switch leds already.
And laptops.
Do i read this right?
5000 lumen at startup out of the box.
Compact Q8 style 3 cells design.
USB C onboard charging…
That i can gift around without a charger or worrying about li-ion cells.
I WANT ONE!!! - to start with. :sunglasses:
The switch light is green, so a bit boring, but the sample is slightly the cyan side of green, a bit different from the Q8.
Of course this may just be what they had around for the sample light, the production light may simply be Q8-green. We can ask for a different colour, who knows… (I quite like red for a change. Orange leds are very inefficient btw)
Since when do we not have to “worry” about Li-ion cells Pat? Quite the contrary, gifting such a light should make you worry MORE, as the recipient is unlikely to remove the cells and even check that balance is being maintained. With low voltage protection being a process of the driver itself, the charging circuit is isolated and left to push the 3 cells simultaneously, regardless of their individual condition. Time to worry, indeed!
And when a light is built with the cells making a battery, there are controls in place to keep balance in check. Hence, a proprietary battery pack like in a lap top. Much different than user interchangeable individual cells.
I’ve been hot rodding lights for 5 years, been an advocate of Li-ion safety the entire time, but y’all go ahead and kill each other, I won’t say another word about it… ciao.