Back in the early days of BLF name brand was the way to go, Panasonic, Sanyo, Samsung, LG, Sony etc.
Brands like Ultrafire were no name unsafe trash.
But these days i have seen Lishen, Molicell, Queen Battery and a whole bunch more, but know nothing about them. Are they as good as the name brands?
Are they safe and long cycle life batteries?
Is there a list of whats good and did i miss any?
I think all of the ones you mentioned. I also think its all about where you buy them and the specs. If you get them from a shady place with specs that simply don’t exist, as the saying goes, there’s a sucker born every minute.
The old names are still good, but there are a few newer manufacturers of batteries. Just be wary of any batteries that say “sony” as Murata bought Sony’s battery division a few years ago, so they’re probably either old or fake. Murata is still very good quality though.
Molicel is very good, they make some of the best high current batteries for flashlights, probably used in things like electric power tools. They also make their batteries directly available to resellers, unlike Samsung/LG where you can’t know for sure that batteries are Grade A.
Lishen is one of the bigger battery producers in China, along with FEB (Far East Battery), their batteries are usually used in the rewrapped cells sold with lights from Sofirn and Wurkkos. Lishen has 2 common models of 21700, one is 4000mAh 35A the other is 5000mAh 10A and both are pretty good. Both Lishen and FEB are good quality, and usually cheaper to purchase. FEB also makes some less common sizes available, like 26650.
Queen Battery is a rewrap company, but they sell a very high quality 26800 battery. Other chinese rewrap companies that usually sell good quality batteries from my experience are Vapcell and Shockli (one of the best high amp 14500)
Usually the best way to know if a battery is good is to check if Mooch has tested it, if its untested and isn’t directly from one of the big manufacturers, then you can’t really be sure of quality.
I find the Samsung 25S to be the top producing 18650, the 40T is king in the 21700 class unless Molicels new one can dethrone it. Molicel runs close behind Samsung these days, or in my flashlight testing thats the case. The VTC5A is also right up there. 30Q is still a good performer and wins on capacity.
Ultrafire 32650 is the best large cell I’ve tested, best without a protection circuit, I’ve removed that protection for high amperage multiple times now.
As is usually true, these are my results as tested in my lights, your mileage may vary.
A buddy bought an Astrolux with the SFH55 16 core emitter, I did some tweaking then tested multiple cells…
And what about Eneloops? Are they still exceptionally good now that they’re not made in Japan anymore?
By P24A I am assuming you mean the P42A? That seems unusually low, was it an old cell?
I switched to Imedion by Powerex years ago, although Eneloop Pro are about equal.
Use up to 40 AA cells to power my top end photography flash units. Thousand pics or more
Pretty new actually, I was surprised as well. Molicel are typically in the top 3 or 4.
Sorry, wrote that down wrong. Been a little worse for wear after 2022. (P42, 24,28, 45, gets scrambled sometimes as Molicel is pretty new to me.)
