Cheap Chinese batteries. I've been pretty hard on them. With good reason though!
As I've showed in previous videos some of them are
but have I found one that
is actually pretty good??
I heard of these PKCell 18650 batteries on
a vape group on Facebook. Someone was on there asking if they could use them for
their vape mod and the general advice was no - because not much was known about them.
so, I decided to have a look into them. Now they are a cheap 18650 cell
they are on eBay they, come from China but they don't make ridiculous claims
for either the capacity OR the amperage, so I thought I would buy some and have a
look for myself to see how they compare. Now, in a lot of ways these are the polar
opposite to the Powerhouse batteries I tested in the last video. They come
with no retail packaging at all, they come in a plain envelope just
shrink-wrapped together, four batteries with very little markings. No a word of note -
they don't have any of the markings they are meant to have by UK legislation but I
don't think that seems to be particularly enforced, the main thing
is to see how good they are and how good they work. Weight wise, they all came in
over 40 grams - between 42 and 45 - a little bit of variation there but heavy
enough that there could be enough material in there to make a good cell.
So as per usual, we'll get them into the charger - they've been fully charged up to
4.2 volts - and we'll run them right down to two and a half volts.
Now, again, strangely enough for a cheap Chinese battery, there is a lot of information
available on these, and the manufacturer states that they should only be
ran down to three volts, but we'll take them down to two and a half.
Let's see how they perform.
Well that's quite good! They have the exact capacity that the manufacturer
claims over the voltage range that they claim, with all four batteries giving
2,200 milliamp hours between four point two volts and three volts.
You can see there that with 18650 cells there isn't much benefit going below 3 volts
because you don't get much capacity return for that extra half volt drop
I wanted to test them on that same range that I've used for previous batteries.
As I explained in the last video, the charger doesn't put a big load on
these batteries when it's discharging them - the current draw topped out about two
amps - these are spec'd at 11 amps continuous. So, we'll use the same method we used in
the last video... I'll adjust a coil resistance to draw about 11 amps from
one of these on a full charge; obviously that I current draw will drop as the
voltage drops, but it should still be drawing about 8 amps when it's flat. [3.0v]
At the same time we'll keep an eye on the battery cell temperature and that'll let us know
if it's struggling to keep up, or if it's supplying that power fine.
Well, that surprised me. I expected these to struggle a bit but they handled
everything fine - including some very long burn times - I think the longest was
about seven minutes continuous burn. Like I mentioned earlier, toward the end of
the test, the current draw would have dropped to around eight amps but they
were still getting worked quite hard. And, while cell temperature did rise -
which is normal for a battery being discharged quite hard - it didn't rise
that high; it didn't rise to any level we needed to worry about.
Is this a vaping battery. Probably not. Not unless you vape at very low wattages or you
intend to connect a few of these together and parallel to give you a
greater current capacity. And that's just too much messing about so get yourself a
higher rated battery if you're going to vape. But for diving, cycling or airsoft
weapon lights - which is how I got into these in the first place - they are a
decent choice. With the 22 hundred milliamp hour capacity, you'll get good
run times on low current devices. Also, if you're wanting to build your own
battery packs or power banks, they could be a good shout for that as well.
I'm actually quite impressed with these for the money and they get even cheaper if
you're buying them in bulk. My only slight point is that the majority of
listings on eBay for these... they list the 2C version, which is a constant
current output of 4.4 amps rather than the 5C or 11 amp battery that I
received... but again, for flashlights and low
current devices that doesn't really matter. Even the support from PKCell was
pretty good. I emailed them for a spec sheet before I tested these, and they replied within a day.
Does this change my opinion of cheap Chinese cells?
I always knew there was good ones - most of the cool stuff we use day in and day out
comes in part or whole from China already. The problem is with such a huge
industry, there's also a huge number of places selling absolute rubbish
counterfeits and low-quality. The key as always is to be able to separate the good
stuff from the bad, and PKCell seems to be pretty decent.
GTF ultrafire and so on, are utter
This will be the last battery test I do for another wee while. I want to get on
with some other things... I was asked to look at the alleged 12000 mAh
18650s that pop up on eBay and Amazon from time to time... we know
they're bulls**t, we don't even have to check. That capacity just isn't possible.
I'll leave it there for now. If this has been useful do all that
usual stuff, like and subscribe - I'd really appreciate it - and until next
time, take it easy, and I'll catch you in the next one.
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