Cheap Chinese Canister Lights :)

[Ioannis]

soshine 5500mah 26650s have been working pretty well for me

Does these soshine batteries have elevated + pole so they touch well with the negative side of the battery located above in row?
I had tried some 26650 that the + pole was on the same level at the round body of the battery, and it coudnt touch the negative pole of the other battery above.

 

[Doby45]

The top of the SoShine does have a bit of a button and the bottom is totally flat..

 

[Caveeagle]

I think what is really confusing to people is that there is a large amount of variability in product quality coming out of China. People who just make blanket "Chinese Junk" comments are actually confusing the issue. Most people recognize the quality of Apple products, which are made in China. As are several brands of dive lights that are marketed here under parent companies.

But you can also get burned by many (or most) of the unscrupulous garbage peddlers who seem to have no standards for quality or consistent specs. Without calling any manufacturer out by name.. I own several lights that were actually made in China, but are sold (and backed) by a US company who holds the manufacturer accountable for quality and reliability.

Regarding batteries.. I got really tired of having a lack of real DATA when it comes to status of my batteries. I too initially purchased a few of the cheap 18650 batteries, Rated for 5,000mAh, they seemed to perform really well in my Dive Rite BX1 backup lights and were tested on many dives up to 60m of burn time without any reason to doubt them. Charging them was just a binary Red/Green affair, and I really had NO idea what their true capacity was.

I had been wanting a nicer battery charger, because I am starting to use these 18650s in several applications, so based on some good advice (here), I got an XSTAR Dragon chargers. At $85, it is a tad pricey compared to many of the other 'Red/Green' chargers available. But.. this charger is REALLY nice. It does a burn town test and gives you actual charging DATA for each of the 4 bays, so I can monitor the status of each of my cells.

Here comes the kicker.. Of the 10 'el cheapo' cells I bought. The best of them rated out to 700mAh of capacity, and the average was around 550mAh. Compare that to some new Panasonic cells I purchased that are all within 1% of their rated 3,400mAh capacity. And those batteries cost me $40 for 4.

So, I am just making the point that at cheap cell that seems to "work fine" on a 45m dive, is NOT giving you a lot of reserve power if you really need it.

 

[Dominick Gheesling]

I purchased these batteries to use with my light:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CAD6AUE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So, far so good.

 

[stuartv]

What have you done to verify their capacity?

ps. Dog Et Al has awesome corndogs, too. ;-)

 

[Dominick Gheesling]

I would also add that I have seen low quality machine work on plenty of high-end products from countries other than china. I was a machinist many years ago for the USN. The machining on my light looks as good as any I have seen so far and that is a major concern considering watertight integrity. I was also able to get a supply of o-rings from the seller after repeated communications.

So far, so good.

 

[Dominick Gheesling]

What have you done to verify their capacity?

I have not verified their capacity. Honestly, I just did the best research I could and chose to purchase batteries that had a good reputation. I definitely did not go cheap on the batteries.

Here is one more link to the Battery Distributor's product page:

18650 Protected 3400mAh Li-ion Rechargeable Battery Orbtronic - For High Performance Flashlights

 

[Rred]

I expect the dive light makers, including the Chinese, do the same thing that Ikelite used to do when they overvolted tractor bulbs to get more brightness at the cost of less bulb life.

http://www.cree.com/led-components/media/documents/XLampXML-11E.pdf
Even Cree will show/tell you how running one of their LEDs at 3000mA instead of the recommended 600mA (a 5x increase in current) will increase the brightness fivefold. So, a 1000 lumen LED can really put out 5000 lumens--if you want to cut the lifetime from 50,000 or 100,000 hours down to maybe 1-10,000 hours. You'll notice dive light makers never rate their LEDs with the industry standard 50-100,000 hours, this is why.
And those same LEDs? Depending on which production bin they are selected from, can have a 3x difference in brightness to begin with. From something like 227 lux to 650 lux, all "the same" LED, just taken from different production lots. But all sold simply as UXM-L2. 3x difference depending on the lot, 5x more depending on the current...Very easy to whip the horses.

No magic, just marketing at work, hiding relevant facts.

 

[fmerkel]

One of the main differences (ignoring general quality of build/water tightness) in 'cheap Chinese' lights is the driver, the electronic circuit that actually makes the LED work. Drivers in inexpensive lights (even well made ones like DGX600, Brinyte, Archon, Ultrafire etc. even expensive Big Blue) use a low(er) quality driver . The light starts out bright, as the current in the battery is used up the voltage drops and the light output decreases. So you can get a low capacity battery that seems to last a really long time. But if you had a meter to compare the output during the burn time, or even compared the same light with a fresh and a well used battery you could see the difference. You about have to double the output before the eye can actually see the difference. I can hardly tell the difference in high vs. med on my canister, but med > low is really noticeable.

Something like a Sola uses a driver with a voltage booster. Light output stays about the same until the battery is exhausted or hits an electronic cutoff in the light circuitry or the battery protection circuit. The Solas and other top end lights cost a whole lot more.

You can see this graphically for some lights here: We Test Lights | Dive Tests and Teviews

 

[Rred]

eagle-
"a few of the cheap 18650 batteries, Rated for 5,000mAh," You'll find some folks on the candlepower forum regularly do tests for capacity. And they regularly get the same results: 3300mA is about the most that anyone can actually get from an 18650 battery. Ask yourself, why is it that the top brand names, the companies that invest billions in engineering research, including Panasonic, can only get ~3300mAh out of these cells? The answer is that there is an energy density limit to the chemistry involved, that's simply as far as they ALL have been able to get.
The masked strangers who claim to get more? Invariably are liars and thieves. And worse, sometimes the corners they cut lead to fires and explosions, because lithium battery chemistry is, like nitroglycerin, something you just can't mess around with.
Go online and look at the Ultrafire web site, in China. Look at their products, according to the maker. Now go look at ebay and Amazon, where you will find "genuine Ultrafire" batteries from a dozen sources. Except, none of them is the same color sleeve that Ultrafire says they use. And all of them have the voltage wrong (i.e. 3.8 instead of 3.6 volts) or the capacity over 4000mA when the real limit is...that same old 3300mA.
Plenty of cheating to go around. And the folks who make them and sell them, know damn well they are thieves.

fm-
"Something like a Sola uses a driver with a voltage booster." Close. But what makes an LED bright is the current applied to it, not so much the voltage. If you make a cheap light where the battery voltage roughly matches the voltage that the LED can run on, that's cheap and it works. If you want a better light, you add a chip that supplies the *correct* amperage, and you ignore the voltage (ignore it, because the choice of battery limits it anyway), and you get predictable steady brightness and LED life. And you get to choose how much current is applied and how bright the LED is.
Then there's a third situation, where you will get the LED growing dimmer as the battery runs down, regardless of how you are trying to control it.
Many ways to skin a cat. As PETA might say, any one of them that involves alive cat is simply wrong, no matter how well it works.