[HKJ]

Battery test/review summary for small batteries

The full comparison can be found on my website.



Doing my large 18650 battery test I also got some smaller batteries. I started with publishing individual reviews and has now enough batteries to make a full comparison of them.
This comparison will mostly include 10440, 14500, 16340 and 18350, but if other LiIon batteries in the same capacity range show up I will probably also include them in this comparison.

I do not plan to do many updates to the text of this article, but because the charts are fetched from my server they will be updated frequently. All the batteries I have tested will be included, and sometimes also for unpublished test/reviews that might be only partial done, these reviews will be published later when they are finished. This does also explain why a battery can be present in some charts, but not in other.

Because the charts will be updated I will not comment on how different batteries compares to each other in this article, that might not be valid after the next update of the charts.

Note: The picture above does show the batteries I have tested when publishing this article, more batteries will be added to the test, but the picture will not be updated.



Battery charts



The first chart is the capacity at different current draw. To measure this capacity I have discharged the batteries down to 2.8 volt at the specified current rates (The 3A discharge is mostly done on IMR batteries).



Some lights cannot drain the battery down to 2.8 volt, but need considerable more voltage, especially to get full brightness. In the above chart I have measured the capacity drained when the battery is down to 3.6 volt, again at different current. Batteries that has a lot of capacity when measured to 2.8 volt does not necessary have that when measured to 3.6 volt, especially at high current drains.



This curve shows how the battery voltage changes when capacity is used from the battery, this curve is made with a 1A current draw. The 1A bar in the above bar charts are based on this curve.



Instead of showing the capacity of the battery, it is also possible to show how long time the battery will last at the 1A current draw.



The batteries has a specified current, this current is the recommended maximum drain on the cell. If this specification is missing, it can usual be assumed to be 2xC, i.e. a 2400mAh battery will have a specified current of 4800mA or 4.8 Ampere. These assumed values are not shown in the chart.
Batteries with a PCB protection also has a trip current, this is at a higher value than the specified current. In my opinion 30% up to 50% above the specified current is best.
The "Protection trip" will be missing for unprotected batteries and because my test equipment is configured to starts at 1 ampere batteries with "Protection trip" below 1 ampere will also be missing.



The 10440/14500/16340/18350 specifications defines the size of the battery, but protected batteries are longer, because a protection circuit must be added and sometimes there is also added a button top. Not all chargers and lights can take the longest cells.