Ultrafire BRC3600 18650

This is the new BRC from Ultrafire [ possibly counterfeit ] , and Ebay is full of these cells , so I thought I should buy one for testing ...

Just a FYI , it seems to suffer a fair bit of internal resistance to both charging and discharging .. This is a bad sign for cell quality ,

Anyhow , onto some performance results .

Discharge : XP-G R5
BRC3600 - 1.63A
Trustfire Grey 2500 - 1.9A
AW2600 - 1.84A
Trustfire Red & Black - 1.63A

Discharge : SSC P7
BRC3600 - 2.15A
Trustfire Grey 2500 - 3.08A
AW2600 - 2.95A
Trustfire R&B - 2.59A



Obviously the capacity claim is a load , a huge load of something at that , I dare say I would place this battery at or near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to 18650 batteries . I highly recommend : Another 18650 to avoid

No-one makes 3600 mAh batteries!

Whats the real capacity of these batteries?

Which 18650 battery are you going to test next? - Superfire!(these are cheap, but are they ant good?)

how2 said:

Whats the real capacity of these batteries?

Click to expand...

First post:
http://translate.google.com/transla...3.msg224908.html#msg224908&sl=pl&tl=en&swap=1

1230mAh @0,7A and 1581mAh @0,4A.

how2 said:

No-one makes 3600 mAh batteries!

Whats the real capacity of these batteries?

Which 18650 battery are you going to test next? - Superfire!(these are cheap, but are they ant good?)

Click to expand...

Capacity , possibly for the one tested , some where in the 2200mA range ... Definitely to be avoided for any high current application . Lots of other batteries to chose from ...
Superfires , some times hard to find , when Im looking to buy ,I cant find them ..

Next test = dx/sku.42153 , or ASUCELL ..... Another 3000mA claim + claims of it having good discharge [ well , with the gauntlet cast ]

Also bought a pair for a test. One cell has 2.2Ah and the other has 1.8Ah when discharger with 0.5A. Capacity drops dramatically with higher loads.

One cell has internal resistance around 200mOhm and the other has 300mOhm. Definitely junk cells and everybody should avoid them!

old4570 said:

Next test = dx/sku.42153 , or ASUCELL ..... Another 3000mA claim + claims of it having good discharge [ well , with the gauntlet cast ]

Click to expand...

Well, these can be really about 3Ah - two independent tests confirmed that. Looking forward to your results.

Good old Ultrafire. Just when you think they can't possibly make a crappier product . . .

Here's the thing, Ultrafire cells are so unpredictable; a counterfeit wearing the Ultrafire label is liable to perform better than the real thing.

old4570 said:

Click to expand...

So if I understand the above chart correctly, however bad the BRC3600 may perform, the AW 2600 is actually significantly worse?

This is surprising, because I actually thought the AW 2600 cells were rather good performers.

In your test conclusions and experience which is the best 18650 to buy regardless of the price ? Thanks for your hard work :thumbsup:

lctorana said:

So if I understand the above chart correctly, however bad the BRC3600 may perform, the AW 2600 is actually significantly worse?

Click to expand...

They are not worse, AW cells are much better. Just these graphs are little bit hard to understand...

Sorry for the thread hijack but I've tried searching many many times and came up with nothing

I got 4 of these last week.

Are they considered to be ok or did I make a big mistake?

FYI they are working great so far but it's early days yet.

My ultrafire WF-139 charges them to 4.18v consistantly

MannyDLights said:

In your test conclusions and experience which is the best 18650 to buy regardless of the price ? Thanks for your hard work :thumbsup:

Click to expand...

Best , simply going by performance , Samsung 30A , then Panasonic 2900
Id put the Jap cells at the top ..

Best Chinese ? AW , and I hate to say it , Fireworm .
Its hard to go wrong with the AW2600 ... The fireworm is still new , so unproven. .

Bloke said:

Sorry for the thread hijack but I've tried searching many many times and came up with nothing

I got 4 of these

last week.

Are they considered to be ok or did I make a big mistake?

FYI they are working great so far but it's early days yet.

My ultrafire WF-139 charges them to 4.18v consistantly

Click to expand...

Jetbeam ?????

These BRC cells are maybe good for applications under 1A load.

I have a lot of Samsung 2600mAh 18650 (from Lenovo T60) they all have a high internal resistence, comapared to LG 2400mAh or Samsung 2200mAh.

lctorana said:

So if I understand the above chart correctly, however bad the BRC3600 may perform, the AW 2600 is actually significantly worse?

This is surprising, because I actually thought the AW 2600 cells were rather good performers.

Click to expand...

Its a discharge curve , so look where it starts , at the start there is far more power being delivered and maintained to about the 2/3 point by the AW .

Once the current lowers , to about 1A then the curve can be stretched out a lot further if there is some power left in the battery .. Its a little deceptive ...

Higher discharge = Less measure capacity
Lower discharge = higher measured capacity ..

If you discharge at a constant current of 500mA , battery X may do [ for arguments sake ] 2600mA .. Increase the discharge rate to 1A and it may drop to 2500mA measured capacity , and double it again and it to 2A and it may show a capacity of 2400mA [ this is just for an example ] and so forth .

So if battery A does 2.75A and battery B does 2.15A at the start , and then they converge 2/3 of the way through , then battery A would have discharged more as well as worked harder , and there fore used up a lot more of the stored energy at the start , while battery B would have used a lot less at the start , and would have had more energy for the back end ...

zelda said:

These BRC cells are maybe good for applications under 1A load.

Click to expand...

These are not good even for light loads. As I said earlier, I measured 2.2Ah and 1.8Ah with 0.5A constant current discharge with my two samples. Poor performance and big difference between pieces. :thumbsdow

LOL @ the 3600mAh claim. First it was 3000mAh then 3600. I think we'll be seeing 4000mAh cells soon!

Actually 3000mAh wasn't just a claim, at low current they were pretty close to 3Ah, these 3600mAh are basically fakes.