Rating of the best 18650 batteries

Continues our review of the best 18650 Samsung ICR18650-22F batteries. This battery is inexpensive, but, of course, inferior in performance to the leader in the rating. With a nominal capacity of 2200 mAh, it allows a discharge current of up to 4.4 A, but if necessary, it can be charged with a current of 2.2 A — Panasonic, according to the passport, should be charged with a current of no more than 1.625 A. That is, this battery is interesting where the capacity is critical not important, but the ability to quickly recharge is desirable.

These «banks» can often be found inside laptop battery assemblies, which makes it possible in practice to evaluate their «survivability» and stability of characteristics. For example, at one time, these batteries worked for the author for 6 years in a laptop (it’s hard to say the number of cycles), after which they “moved” to a home-made power bank, having at that time a measured capacity of 1800-1850 mAh. And after another three years of infrequent use, five of the six “cans” died at the same time, instantly dropping the voltage even at a load of only 0.5 A. So we can consider them quite stable in properties, in assemblies with a balancer, the characteristics should not “spread” over time . But the tendency to abrupt “die” at one moment, which the author has also noted in other Samsung models (for example, INR18650-25R), still makes you think about buying batteries that are more expensive, but devoid of a disposition to sudden failure after a gradual decrease in capacity .

Not even 20 amps of discharge current is enough? Well, Sony’s «record holder» allows you to work with currents up to 3 A, and discharge the battery not up to 2.5 V (which is standard for lithium-ion batteries), but up to 2 V. However, the nominal capacity is 3120 mAh measured just at such a discharge — that is, using VTC6 with controllers designed for «ordinary» batteries and disconnecting the load at 2.5 V, it will not be possible to use it completely.

The maximum charge current can reach up to 5 A (or 6 A when charging with a pulsating current) — but, of course, you need to control the temperature very carefully, lithium-ion batteries express their dislike for overheating literally loudly.

Such a battery is interesting for extremely high current load requirements without the ability to increase the current output by parallel sections (in the same battery power tool). Otherwise, cheaper «chocolates» from LG, capable of delivering the rated capacity at standard voltage cutoff and more tenacious, would be a more reasonable choice.

Samsung traditionally takes the price, offering one of the cheapest «brand» high-current 18650 batteries, with a capacity of 2500 mAh capable of delivering current up to 20 A constantly and up to 100 A in a pulsed mode. It would seem, what else do you want? Unfortunately, at the same time, these batteries are also one of the most short-lived: they indicate a “margin of safety” of only 250 charge / discharge cycles, and when the capacity drops to 60%. Agree, when compared with the same «chocolates» from LG, the ratio of resource and price makes the low price of «Samsungs» no longer so attractive: with frequent use (hence, with frequent recharges), the difference in resource will become very noticeable. Moreover, as the batteries wear out, the “run-up” of the characteristics increases — when used in assemblies, this will lead to an imbalance and the inability to use the stored energy “to the fullest”.