Originally Posted by
dscheidt
You can buy four battery shaped objects for 16 bucks. You may, or may not, get a lithium battery.
"Battery shaped object". Clever.
I've bought quite a few 18650 cells from DX. One was indeed bad -- the other 15 or so were just fine. DX replaced the bad one with no trouble -- I got a new pack (so I got a free cell out of the deal.)
I've only explicitly measured the capacity of a few cells, but the ones I did measure all worked out to be 2500 mAh (the rated capacity) or a bit more. Even the ones that I didn't measure have performed similarly in flashlights, so I expect that they too would perform similarly if I tried to measure it.
It's exactly that sort of crap cell that's causing problems in the magic shine (and lots of other POS cheap chinese electronic junk, too.)
You must buy different batteries than I do. Mine have been great.