Hi all,
I am sure this may have been asked before so forgive my newbie repeatition.
I recently purchased a set of 4 Panasonic GA 18650 3500mah batteries. I seemed to have had trouble charging these fellows. I used a Littokala 4 bay charger that seemed to take an entire day to charge and even then, the charger was telling me that they were only 50% charged. It was after I thought they were charged, that I started to replace currently in use Panasonic NCR 18650 B 3400mah batteries. To my shock, I noticed that the 'new' 3500mah batteries were 2 to 2.5mm longer than the original 3400mah Panasonics. This new uncomfortable fact would mean that the new 18650 set would have trouble fitting in to the flashlight bays, the tail cap would have trouble closing now - to tight. What seems to have happened was that I had unknowingly purchased a set of protected batteries, where the set I was already using were unprotected. I now have some questions which I am hoping you chaps have the answers to.
1) Are all protected 18650 batteries a few millimeters longer than the unprotected version?
2) Why isn't the size differential made more clear in the product advertisement of either version? I say this because both protected and unprotected variants use the same product type code, i.e. 18650.
3) Why since the difference in length is so significant, isn't each version given its own product code to make each type easily recognisable? And why isn't there a different code for flat top version and buttion top version? For example, use 18650 for unprotected flat tops, 18650/1 for protected flat tops, 18650/2 for unprotected button tops and 18650/3 for protected button tops.
4) Why don't flashlight manufacturers state which exact type of 18650 battery each of their flashlight models should use, flat vs button and protected vs unprotected?
5) Why don't flashlight manufacturers state which 18650 battery output each of their flashlight models should use, that is, 2000mah, 2200mah, 2500mah, and so on?
6) When a battery is protected, what is it protected from or what does it protect?
7) What advantage or material difference does a higher rated battery output make to the actual use or operation of a flashlight?
8) Is there likely to be a significant difference between the Panasonic 3400mah and the 3500mah versions and if so, what is it?
9) What is the highest rated battery output that is genuinely delivering the stated output? For example, I know Nitecore offer a 5000mah 18650 battery, but is this a genuine output or marketing wishful thinking?
10) Is there or there preferred chargers for these types of batteries or will any 18650 charger do the job regardless?
11) Anything else I should know about or consider when selecting 18650 batteries?
Thanking you in advance.