SureFire batteries 10-2018

I bought a box of SureFire batteries about 5 years ago, maybe longer.

My question is if they loose any charge over the years? Will they still be good up until 2018? Or will they be 75% or so?

Just curious, it's only 12 batteries so it's no biggie if I gotta order another box.

Bumps

They should be good, but unless you have a battery charger/tester that can do a discharge test on them at say 500mA, you only guessing. I guess you could use one up in a light with a known current/drain and go from there.

I'd use them up sooner, rather than later. They've got a 10 year shelf life, so yours were probably 2008 production.

You don't want to rely on expired cells when the zombies come a knockin'. Either that, or get into rechargeables like most of us here!

Chris

It's my understanding that at the 10-year mark lithium primaries will have around 70% of their original capacity, meaning that you'll get 7/10th the runtime compared to when they were new.

If you NEED that extra 30% of runtime, by all means buy a new box! The ~$25 spread out over 10 years is negligible (5 pennies a week, LOL).

EDITing to add: As well said by Kestrel and Woods Walker below, single-cell use only would be the way to go!

I wouldn't have any issues with using them w/ no testing, but ONLY in single-cell lights IMO. We have seen instances of older CR123's aging differently, resulting in mismatched cells in the same batch - and mismatched cells in multi-cell applications can be a serious potential issue.

I have a SF CR123 that actually expires this year in my headlamp right now. Rather ironic as the first night run of the year are with batteries that just expired. Got them many years ago so been using them up through last year. Only two more. I trust then but not with pals aka they go solo.

Kestrel said:

I wouldn't have any issues with using them w/ no testing, but ONLY in single-cell lights IMO. We have seen instances of older CR123's aging differently, resulting in mismatched cells in the same batch - and mismatched cells in multi-cell applications can be a serious potential issue.

Click to expand...

Woods Walker said:

I have a SF CR123 that actually expires this year in my headlamp right now. Rather ironic as the first night run of the year are with batteries that just expired. Got them many years ago so been using them up through last year. Only two more. I trust then but not with pals aka they go solo.

Click to expand...

lovecpf

Woods Walker said:

I have a SF CR123 that actually expires this year in my headlamp right now. Rather ironic as the first night run of the year are with batteries that just expired. Got them many years ago so been using them up through last year. Only two more. I trust then but not with pals aka they go solo.

Click to expand...

Lol, same situation here; the CR123 in my SF Titan has an exp. date of March 2014.

Thanks for the replies guys!

That's kinda scary that I would have to worry about using them paired up, especially since my only use for these batteries is paired in a Surefire E2L.

Kestrel, when you say a serious potential issue, I assume you mean they can explode?

ChrisGarrett, the reason I haven't switched to rechargeables is because I don't use this light that often anymore, that's why I have so many batteries. It's an EDC light, but most of the time I will also bring my Milwaukee M12 lantern with me when I need a portable light source, so the Surefire only gets used very sporadically.