18650 Batteries .....
 

I just purchcased the Magnum Innovation 860 Lumens USB Bike Light. Should arrive within a few days .....

Question: Which 18650 batteries would you recommend ? I will be cycling many hours at night, so I need extra batteries fully charged for every ride.

So far, I have these two on my Amazon Wish List:
1) Orbtronic 3400mAh Protected
2) Panasonic NCR 18650B 3400mAh.

What does the "B" stand for ?

I also purchased the Opus BT-C3400 to charge the 18650 batteries.

I have never heard of Orbtronic, but it appears they just buy the better brand batteries (Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Sony) and relabel them. Protection circuits are always added by the seller. You need to be careful where you buy batteries. The bingo letters after the battery often refer to properties of the battery. The one property that is important is to know if your device requires high drain, like 20 or 30 amps. Yes, 18650s pack a lot of power!

I buy my 18650s from Mountain Electronics as this vendor does a lot of business and has a huge following on the Home | BudgetLightForum.com. Flashlight information is a site with independent testing/reviews of batteries et al. That flashlight looks pretty decent. I use the XinTD C8 V5 on my bike as I prefer single battery flashlights for their safer battery requirements. I purchased Panasonic NCR18650B Protected 3400mAh batteries, but 3500 mAh ones are available now. I also tend to purchase hiigh drain batteries of some form. A bit of googling should allow you to figure out what the various letters are.You might also do a bit of reading at Basic to Advanced Battery Information from Battery University.Oh, and I doubt you'll get more than 1.5 hours out of that flashlight even with 3500 mAh batteries. That's the max runtime I get with my light. Carrying spare batteries, though, is easy enough.

Best as of 2017
 

LG MJ1 Li-ion

Honestly, as long as you get good name brand batteries, I doubt the difference between any of them is more than a few percent at most. I just go onto Amazon and find a Panasonic with good reviews and order those. Spending hours researching to get maybe 2% more battery life is false economy.

Looked up the website for this light https://www.magnusgearusa.com/produc...bike-headlight. It uses a CREE XM-L2 bin which is rated at 1198 lumens maximum XLamp XM-L2. It's a bit brighter than the XML-T6 bin that is used in a lot of inexpensive flashlights. At 860 lumens it draws about 7 watts so it will drain most batteries fairly quickly so the 90 minute run time may be realistic. The product guide shows 90 minute in full mode https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/07...00046583592770 and 3 hours at 400 lumens. I'm not enamored by the USB charging as it takes 6 hours so having extra batteries and using a separate battery charger is a good idea. The fact that you can remove and switch batteries is a really good point. I use a $10 XML-T6 18650 flashlight and inexpensive Chinese batteries. So far they have served the purpose and none have gone bad in about 18 months of use. Note the warning on the front of the light ("hot!"). 7 watts which is what my flashlight uses will warm the front of the light quite a bit.

Has anyone actually run into problems with the generic 18650 batteries sold on eBay? Do they really have shorter life (whether it's how long a full charge lasts, or the entire lifespan)? Theoretically they may risk hazard like explosion, but I assume very rarely? Also many of them claim to have protection circuit, which I doubt, but I still buy them. They are dirt cheap in comparison, so maybe that make up for the shorter life (which is still pretty long).

I have used the Panasonic 18650 batteries for vaping, literally hundreds of recharges and still going strong.

Where do you think the 18650 batteries came from in all those cheap Amazon no-name hoverboards that started fires? The brand name batteries cost more than the nonames. But they last for years so the incremental cost is pennies a day, maybe. It's hard enough to get it right with brand name batteries. Ask Samsung and Apple!

You are comparing apples to oranges with the hoverboards. Those contain large capacity batteries subjected to high-drain current use. The largest battery I have seen specifications for in USB rechargeable bike lights is about 1000 mAh. Most 18650 batteries are rated at 5000 mAh or less. If you short out a large capacity battery you can get a fire very quickly. Even the small 18650 batteries can burst into flame as some smokers have discovered when they stupidly put them in a pocket full of change (coins make a great conductor). I've accidentally shorted a 3 pack of 18650 batteries just once and the batteries didn't combust because the leads from the battery pack melted first and stopped the short. The batteries just got a little warm.

The problem with phones seems to be trying to create a larger capacity battery in a smaller package for longer phone life before you recharge them. These are lithium polymer batteries so not exactly comparable to the 18650 battery.

Check out BigClive on youTube. He's looked at some eBay LiIon. Some of them are ludicrously overrated. Even some that seem reasonably rated at something like 2400 mAh wind up actually testing at 300.

I just bite the bullet and buy well rated first or second tier cells off Amazon.

AFAICT, all of the ones claiming over 3600mAh are turning out to be under 1000mAh when tested. Under that, it seems you've got somewhere around a 50% chance of getting at least a 1500mAh cell, regardless of the label. Maybe 2400 if you're lucky.

I've been using the cheap cells, but after learning about their problems, I can't recommend them. The risk of fire is small if you look at the failure rate, whatever it is. For instance, if one cell in 5,000 catches fire, that sounds decent, but it's not. So I make sure I'm nearby when my cells are in the charger.

On the other hand, I bought one of those cheap flashlights for my wife. It was somewhere around $7 to $10, shipped from China. It came with a cell and a charger and case and something else I forgot. By sliding the head back or forth, you can adjust the beam angle, and the intensity changes in inverse proportion to the beam's width (of course). This has worked out great. It's not great quality, but it's for finding her way on an unlit country road and things like that. It's much brighter than it needs to be.

I have a surplus of cheap 18650 cells, so I won't be buying any soon, but when I do, I'll switch to the good ones. I've decided I don't like these flashlights for use on the bike.

Thanks for that info. I wasn't aware that LG has been vastly improving their batteries. I might just have to order a few of those as I'm terribly short of 18650's at the moment. Is there a trusted discount USA seller for these? I considered Mt. Electronics but their site is down at the moment.

I've got some Ultrafire batteries I got a few years ago when I started using 18650 powered flashlights and they don't last as long as the Panasonics I switched to. The lights are dimmer when I used the Ultrafire batteries too, but they're OK in the generic 18650 powered flashlights I use around the house.

Yes, I have to agree. However it's interesting to see that manufacturers like LG have some decent offerings that are a bit cheaper. I just ordered a pair of the LG MJ1's. I did have to do a bit of research first just to make sure these are real. LG been around a long time and the MJ1's for a couple years but first I heard about the MJ1's was just a couple days ago. Like you I generally just buy Panasonic but you do have to be careful who you buy from or you might get fakes. I ordered the LG's from Obtronic ( USA ) and should get them next week. I'm also planning on getting one of those Opus smart chargers. I've been charging my 18650's on cheap Chinese chargers for years and while they work fine ( testing with volt meter to make sure ) I'd love to have a nicer charger. Not to mention I'd love having a charger capable of testing the capacity of a cell just so I know for sure if I have good cells, bad cells or fakes. Those kinds of chargers cost a bit more but it's about time I get something with some nicer features.

I bought Panasonic batteries to use with my headlamp and they work great. Pay for the real thing so you get real performance and security that they won't blow up on you. I actually opened an Anker battery and it had the green label Panasonic 18650s inside. :)

Don't buy unprotected cells on amazon or ebay. Amazon is absolutely loaded with counterfeit cells. Note that all 18650 cells sold on amazon are "fulfilled by amazon" and none are actually sourced by amazon. Most protected cell manufacturers have reliable supply sources of OEM cells, however. Find a reliable source that has been around a while if you want bare panasonic cells. I use illumn.

Yep, I already know about ebay but I thought Amazon was better. I was about to pull the trigger on the LG's offered on Amazon when I happened to notice that some of the buyers were complaining about getting bogus cells. I figured the sellers were giving some of the buyers the actual brand name cell just to get some positive reviews and then start sending out the fake cells after the good reviews pile up. Nope, once you see a couple bad reviews you know something "not right" is going on. You can buy the brand name cells from the Chinese web sites for less money but sometimes those cells are bought from less than reputable sellers and sometimes the middle-man seller isn't always aware that he has a bad batch. When you buy off Chinese websites, ebay or Amazon for batteries you are almost always rolling the dice.

Amazon is worse than ebay in my opinion. Ebay's reputation for counterfeits is well known. Amazon is more insidious. People assume that amazon wouldn't keep counterfeit goods in their warehouses, and that "fulfilled by amazon" products are a safe bet, when they are not. You have to be extremely wary buying from amazon when the seller is not listed as amazon.com.

Especially electronics.

In the USA in the end of the last century, consumer electronics were damn safe due to UL inspection being basically required to go to market....no retailer wanted the liability of selling poorly made goods that could burn a house down or kill someone. Whether it was a VCR or alarm clock or XMas lights, they needed a UL logo to be on shelves at retailers.

Tons of consumer electronics sold online conspicuously lack the UL logo...because well, they're cheap, and the online retailer will go bust and rebrand rather than actually have to deal with the fallout.

So far I have always chosen the cheap Chinese batteries on ebay that claimed to be "protected" or has "protection circuit" printed on the battery (actually many or most of them do!). Now I'm not sure they actually are, otherwise maybe they wouldn't have been so cheap? Some day I will try an expensive brand name.

I bought a pair of unprotected tabbed cells from Amazon. They were fine. Full capacity, good packaging. HyperPS from Innolife. There are no bad reviews so far on Amazon.

Nowadays there really is no good reason not to buy good brand name 18650's. Prices on good brand name Li-ion batteries have come down significantly in the past couple years. Of course if you are inclined to buy only protected cells than that will bring up the cost. Protected cells sometimes are almost double the price, depending on where you buy.

Personally I have no problems using non-protected cells. I've been using 18650 batteries since the introduction of high output LED's. Can't remember now when I started buying unprotected cells but it's been at least 3 years or more. The reason I switched to unprotected cells is two-fold; one, they're cheaper and two, "I have never run a protected 18650 cell down to cut-off". That said I believe I'm educated enough on the use of Li-ion cells to be able to detect when the cell needs to be switched out. If you look at the power curve of any good Li-ion cell it's very apparent that the voltage drops very rapidly towards the end of it's usable runtime. If you're using a high power torch or lamp, the loss of visible output is going to be very apparent as long as you are paying attention. Now if you are the type of person who either runs very low output lamps or simply use a cell till it cuts off then yes, you need to use protected cells. The only cells I use protection on now are the smaller 16340 ( RCR123A ) type cells. Since 16340's are smaller and used with torches that are generally using lower output, it's much harder to judge when the battery voltage is getting low. On those I will sometimes run to cut-off.

Anyway...good Panasonic 3400mAh *unprotected cells can be had anywhere in the range of $6 a cell or greater. "Protected" Panasonics will likely be anywhere from $11 a cell to $18 a cell depending on what rebranding the seller is using. Typically good rebranded protected Panasonics go by many names; Keeppower, Orbtronics, Xtar, Nitecore...etc. There are many others. I see good non-rebranded 3400 mAh "Protected" Panasonics on Amazon for about $12.40 a cell but that's just an example of one seller. I can buy the same cell ( unprotected ) for about $6 from Battery Junction. com. I also see the same cells sold on other websites for about the same price but you need to be careful where you buy or you might get fakes.

All I can tell you is that I commissioned a 30.6Ah, 52V triangle pack for my ebike, from EM3ev.com. It is the second large pack I have purchased and uses the new LG MJ1 cells. It shouldn't be difficult to find them. Good luck.

https://em3ev.com/shop/50v-14s9p-large-triangle-pack/

You buy protected and non-protected according to what the application requires, not to save money. If you put non-protected cells into a circuit that is designed for protected cells, you run the risk of either overcharging and causing the cells to overheat, swell and possibly catch fire, or drain them too low and damage the cell and drastically reduce their lifespan.