Well, thats the difference. USA will take longer to you.
XTAR are OK.. but compare them to the IO 2600mAh on HKJs page. Take a look at the curve at 3A and then order those from IO. ;)
How much pricier are those from IO?
At the moment my best bet could be Efest, HKJ will review them in coming months, Shadowww cant stop pointing to them and there seems to be no negative information regarding those batteries, which is a good thing and they are so far best priced, pair for 14.2 at MF.
Those fro Pandawill cost even less, thats why I ask :D!
http://www.intl-outdoor.com/2-pcs-sanyo-ur18650fm-2600mah-protected-battery-p-516.html
Thats ~4.50$ more. And while there are no negative experiences, there are no positive reviews either. Maybe you'll have paid ~4.50$ more for the same performance in the end.. or you'll have paid ~4.50$ more for better quality. Or you wait a few weeks.. if thats worth 5 bucks to you, then wait. ;)
In all honesty I think you’re over thinking this, it’s “just” a pair of batteries. What I would do:
- Avoid the cheap ones with unknown cells, i.e. UltraFire, Trustfire, Uranusfire and so on.
- Buy something with either Panasonic or Sanyo cells.
- Buy from a trusted seller so you know that you get what you pay for and to avoid unnecessary hassle.
- Buy them now, you’ve been thinking about this for 6 days now. It’s good to be cautious and thorough, but still…
What I would do is to buy IO:s Sanyo 2600 cells. IO is a great store that ships fast and the batteries are great. They might be a couple of dollars more expensive then some of the others but that’s just that, a couple of dollars…
http://www.intl-outdoor.com/2-pcs-sanyo-ur18650fm-2600mah-protected-battery-p-516.html
Good luck.
Yeah, Volk, I aggree, Ive been sitting on these batteries for far too long LOL :D!
Will order them tonight, within 4 hours :D!
Pandawill UK ships only to UK, not to all European Union. Plus their shipping isn’t free.
Yeah, thought that I read it somewhere but couldnt find it on their web page, anyway, Efest are on their way :D!
Now try to actually order it (from anywhere outside of UK), and get disappointed. 
Ah, I see. Or rather, being in the UK, I don’t Not a bad price for these, if you do live in UK, but I’ll stick to 3100 Panasonics from our new sponsor, Efest, once they can ship li-ions OK.
Why not the 3400 Panasonics? Unlike Enerpower etc, Efest have decent pricing on 3400mAh ones.
Yeah, actually I probably will - they didn’t have them when I ordered some recently, then the cells I did order were returned by HK post, so I had refund & am waiting for the rules to be relaxed before ordering again.
+1 regarding HK post, I contacted sz-eyoung group and they said that due to HK post refusing to ship these batteries they cant ship them out this month and maybe next month will be possible!
I hope Manafont will be able to ship my batteries LOL :D!
How’s it going? Was Manafont able to ship?
I got a shipment from Intl-Outdoor about 2 weeks ago with 6 batteries, no problem. I think they sent it with Singapore Post which might be the reason that it worked. So if Manafont can’t help you don’t forget to try IO.
(is it obvious that I like IO? 
)
I just got 2 panasonic 2900’s in the mail yesterday…they took awhile to get here so no clue how they shipped…glad they made it though!
I ordered 4 18650’s off manafont about 1.5 months ago and they shipped them singapore post…they were quite slow getting here but made it just fine…maybe sing post rules are more lax?
I think Singapore post avoids the problems.
Just noticed that doingoutdoor on eBay has the Keeppower 3400mAh’s available (and they ship via Singapore Post). $27.50 + $2 shipping for a pair. They also accept best offer. I had 4 Keeppower 3100’s for about $42, I seem to recall, some months ago.
They also have the Panasonic NCR18650B 3400’s for $25 * $2 shipping
Be interesting to see what offers are accepted
Are those protected or not?
yeah doingoutdoor has a best offer but will just reject your best offer without haggling…he lost me a customer doing that…this last pair of 2900’s I offered him what I paid for the last set I got from him and he just shut me down…lost me as a customer right then and there…I ordered them for less off another ebay vendor and those were the ones I received on monday…so far so good…
The Keeppower certainly are protected, the Panasonic don’t appear to be.
He was certainly open to reasonable offers a few months ago. I recently offered $35 for an Olight S10 (because he’d screwed up the listing, and put “Make offer on Olite s10 -$35” in the header, lol). He came back with $39, so I passed. I noticed when I last looked at the S10 listing a comment “Please don’t make offer again”. Fair enough, I wasn’t going to
He will also have the Ti S10 available at the end of the month.