18650 Batteries and charger

[wineguydoug]

Hey All,

I need some 18650 batteries and a charger for a couple of the Chinese made flashlights and not sure what to buy as there are so many different ones on ebay. Any help is appreciated!!

Here is a l;ink to the light. I know it might not be great, but for $17 i figured it was worth a try as a backup or for a friend!

Ultra Bright 8000Lumen 3x XM-L2 LED Diving 18650 Flashlight Torch Lamp Max 100M | eBay

 

[runsongas]

the panasonic 3400mah batteries are the best. i use an efest luc v4 charger. the xtar chargers are also decent.

 

[Doby45]

I concur on the Panasonic 3400 batteries. You need to go ahead and get a good charger that will more than pay for itself if you use rechargeable.

Panasonic Batteries

OPUS BT-C3400 Charger

Both of the above products have awesome reviews. The OPUS will show you exactly how good the batteries you buy are.

 

[KaptaniDerya]

I have Olight 3400mah Protected 18650 Rechargeable Li-ion Batteries. Quite happy with them. For charger I recommend NiteCore D4

 

[wineguydoug]

Thanks for the help folks! Happy new years to everyone!

 

[stuartv]

I have the Opus charger that Doby mentioned. It is great.

But, if I were buying a new charger today, I would probably get the new Xtar VP4 Plus Dragon charger.

XTAR VP4 PLUS DRAGON Charger

The Opus will charge 4 x 18650 at once. But, it will not charge 4 x 26650 at once. The battery slots aren't wide enough.

The VP4 will charge 4 batteries as fat as a D cell (so, I think 4 x 32650) at one time.

The first two digits are the width, in millimeters, and the rest is the length. So, a 32650 is fatter than a 26650, which is fatter than an 18650, but they are all approximately the same length.

I would definitely only buy a charger, like the Opus or the Dragon, that has a mode for testing the battery capacity. Without a way to test capacity, how will you know when you have a battery that is dying? The only way would be when it dies part way through a dive where it should have lasted the whole dive.

 

[Doby45]

Dang I like the Dragon but for almost double the price of the OPUS it just doesn't make sense to me. If I could stomach the price I would get that one for sure though.

 

[stuartv]

Dang I like the Dragon but for almost double the price of the OPUS it just doesn't make sense to me. If I could stomach the price I would get that one for sure though.

Yeah, I'm not going to buy one anytime soon (I hope). My Opus is working fine. And I bought an 8 cell charger (but not tester) from Mountain electronics, so I can charge a lot of batteries at once. The Opus can handle the occasional testing or reconditioning I need to do. But, since my main lights are now the Xtar D26, and they use 26650 batteries, if my Opus were to die, I would get the Dragon as a replacement, just so I could charge 4 batteries at once, instead of 2.

 

[Doby45]

Yeah, I'm not going to buy one anytime soon (I hope). My Opus is working fine. And I bought an 8 cell charger (but not tester) from Mountain electronics, so I can charge a lot of batteries at once. The Opus can handle the occasional testing or reconditioning I need to do. But, since my main lights are now the Xtar D26, and they use 26650 batteries, if my Opus were to die, I would get the Dragon as a replacement, just so I could charge 4 batteries at once, instead of 2.

I could not agree more with you as I am sitting in the same boat with the D26 lights. I almost only use 26650s now. I am actually looking at a way to do four on the OPUS. It would require some type of "holder" for two of them, but the charger itself can handle charging four, its just a sizing thing.

 

[stuartv]

I could not agree more with you as I am sitting in the same boat with the D26 lights. I almost only use 26650s now. I am actually looking at a way to do four on the OPUS. It would require some type of "holder" for two of them, but the charger itself can handle charging four, its just a sizing thing.

That's kind of why I bought one of these:

Enova GYRFALCON ALL-88 8x Li-Ion + NiMH Charger

One any given dive day, I could use 2 or 3 26650s (for my lights), 8 AAs (for my camera strobes), an 18650 (for my video light), and possibly another 1 or 2 AAs for strobe marker lights.

I wanted a charger that I could take with me on dive trips that would have at least a chance of charging everything at once, so I don't have to deal with charging some, then remembering to check the charger and swap in more batteries to charge before I go to bed. If I really do use all those batteries on one day, I will still have to do two rounds of charging. But, it will be a rare day that I really use that many batteries. In reality, if I'm shooting photographs with my strobes, I probably won't use any other lights, so I will only need to charge the 8 AAs. And if I'm not doing that, then I can do all the rest and still only have to do one round of charging.

With the ability to charge up to 8 x 26650 at once, the Gyrfalcon charger should handle anything I need. And I can keep the Opus at home and use it for testing and reconditioning (and charging at home, too). The Gyrfalcon lives in a Ziploc in one of my dive boxes that goes with me on road trips.