Welcome to CPF, space-cowboy!:thumbsup:
I agree to some extent, but I'm not sure which is worse, potentially misleading advertising, or a "U.S. based company" that appears to be nothing more than yet another "storefront" based in the U.S. which specializes in the distribution of imported Chinese goods. There's really nothing wrong with that, providing it is made clear to the customer where these products actually originate from. It may actually be a good thing, as far as customer service etc.
Orbtronic never claimed that the cells or charger were made in the USA that was just what somebody posted on Amazon in his review.
I read that & ran with it without doing any of my own research.
What's most important to me is whether or not Orbtronic will stand behind these cells - As long as the batteries are good quality I couldn't care less where they came from.
Looking over Orbtronic's various offerings, I really didn't see anything that did not appear to be imported from China. Many of their products are similar to DX's and other Asian vendors, such as many UltraFire products.
This may be a good thing. Tenergy for example, another U.S. based storefront for a Chinese company, has some fairly decent products, although they have some that fall quite short, as well.
I don't recall any stellar performance reports from anyone testing Soshine cells. I'd say "fair" would be a better description. Distributors such as the various xxxxxFire brands sometimes use Sanyo cells, as well. The question is, where do they obtain these cells from? Most are "second tier" cells bought up as surplus. That doesn't mean they are necessarily bad, but often are not top quality due to age, the specific reason they were rejected for battery pack production, and so on. The "best" cells, for the most part, go into battery packs and are not sold off as surplus.
I'll just have to disagree here. The fundamental quality of a Li-Ion charger, is that it properly charge cells. To my knowledge, none of the Soshine chargers do so. Also, for those that insist on buying a faulty charger, there are many other options that are cheaper. Considering this, in my opinion, all of Soshine's Li-Ion chargers are overpriced.
What should I be looking for? You are basically saying that the SoShine charger sucks but you aren't giving any details. Does it not shut off when the cells are charged? does it undercharge?Overcharge? I'm almost definitely going to get the Pila charge but I'd like to know what kiind of problems to expect from this one while I have it.
As for the cost of cells, top tier cells cost more than second tier cells. This is usually reflected in the distributor's pricing of their cells.
Also, Li-Ion cells are not manufactured to be used individually by consumers. They are manufactured for the making of battery packs for use in consumer devices such as laptop computers, and are not intended to be used in devices such as flashlights/torches.
A positive nipple is an option that can be added by cell distributors often, along with an added protection circuit, as well. Hopefully, these features can be done properly, although it would appear that Soshine has had
a bit of trouble with this process.
I pushed on the nipples of both of my SoShine (Orbtronic) batteries and neither one moved at all. That post is from 2009...Hopefully they have improved since then.
So the new Soshine 2800mA protected cell has gone through the tests.
I will say that I do not own any Li-Ion powered lights that require cells with a positive nipple. A few times I have had to remove the nipple so the cell(s) will fit into a light, due to the extra length added by this option. I view the need for a positive nipple on Li-Ion cells as a design flaw in the light, not the cell.
Dave
