Protected battery giving higher output than unprotected?

Yesterday I received a protected EVVA NCR18650GA and an unprotected NCR18650GA both from Mountain Electronics. My intentions for each was to run the protected one in the custom S3 EDC Richard made for me since it doesn't have undervoltage protection and run the unprotected one in my M2Xvn assuming it'd benefit more from not having the protection circuit plus it does have undervoltage protection.

I fully charged both and compared both batteries in both lights. Both batteries measured 4.17V off the charger. I used a lux meter calibrated equal to Zebralight lumens to compare relative outputs. To my surprise on the M2Xvn turbo, the protected battery put out roughly 100 more "lumens" (approx lumens based on how the meter was calibrated) than the unprotected (protected yielded ~1350, unprotected yielded ~1250).

This has me a bit confused and was backwards from what I was expecting. I was hoping someone more knowledgeable could advise as to what could be the case here since I was assuming the protected battery would have slightly higher resistance than the unprotected. Maybe the circuit doesn't have anything to do with it?

FWIW and to top it all off the unprotected battery yielded slightly more "lumens" in my 4.4A S3 EDC than the protected (maybe 15-25 more) lol. Beats me.... [emoji52]

Thanks in advance and looking forward to learning something from this.

Must be a hefty protection circuit?
I was not aware they could handle Vn lights.

It surprises me it does, not that it puts out more strangely first.

WarRaven said:

Must be a hefty protection circuit?
I was not aware they could handle Vn lights.

It surprises me it does, not that it puts out more strangely first.

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Not to get off topic, but I had initially tested my M2Xvn with a protected Keeppower 3400mah only running it ~1 minute bursts and was getting ~1200 steady lumens. Can't remember if it was fresh off the charger.

In the M2Xvn thread, one poster states that Vinh claims you will get about 80% max performance with protected batteries.

Ah thanks.
Same as M3XS-UT, yeah they'll fly, or should I'd think.
Sorry if derailing.

WarRaven said:

Ah thanks.
Same as M3XS-UT, yeah they'll fly, or should I'd think.
Sorry if derailing.

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No problem, these are some great lights we have.

I have a couple 25Rs coming too and interested to see how these perform relative to the GAs.

WarRaven said:

Must be a hefty protection circuit?
I was not aware they could handle Vn lights.

It surprises me it does, not that it puts out more strangely first.

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Also, I believe I remember seeing somewhere that the protection circuit on the GA might trip at 8A. I think the M2Xvn tops out at ~5A.

Well that should handle it, from my limited knowledge it depends on FET on PCB, needs more than two to achieve them results IIRC.
Quality cell.

Edit, I believe at least two will handle 6.4 amps until they get warm where three FET pushes that up safely to 8, with limited heat even.
Please correct where I may be mistaken if needed.

Have a great one.

Ha no battery expert here and I should ask to be corrected where mistaken, I think I'd read that off of the product page on Richard's site. I do think it's a quality cell for sure based on what I've read and the very very limited experience I have with it. I'm just still baffled why the protected one was putting out a little more *** than the unprotected.

My crazy idea is this.. Put both cells through about five charge cycles and retest and tell me if it's still like that.
Just curious.☺

I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure. I might try to charge them both back up tonight and try again. Maybe let the light run for a couple minutes and see what happens.

All I can think is discharge / charge a handful of times with both cells. Sure the performance should increase as well but also bare in mind the different cells, will have slight different tolerances .

Either way 1250 and 1350 is very impressive

How is a battery protected?

Yes, they should get better I'd think after a couple charges.
Crazy.☺

ven said:

All I can think is discharge / charge a handful of times with both cells. Sure the performance should increase as well but also bare in mind the different cells, will have slight different tolerances .

Either way 1250 and 1350 is very impressive

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I didn't even think about them having differing tolerances. I fully charged them again last night along with fully charging a protected Keeppower 3400mah and tried all 3 batteries in the M2Xvn tracking them for 30 sec. The protected Keeppower and unprotected NCR18650GA performed near identically while the protected NCR18650GA clearly outshined both. Without instrumentation we wouldn't really be able to tell the difference though lol.

On the other hand, the protected NCR18650GA did slightly worse than the other 2 batteries in the 4.4A S3 EDC upon activation to 30 sec.

Whether or not this really tells us anything or not, I don't know since a minute or so of runtime is only that...one minute. I guess it's interesting how each high drain light performs with each battery, but I suppose the draw of the higher drain batteries is that since they have a lower internal resistance, they'll maintain the higher outputs for longer than a standard LiCo. I'm eager to see how the 25Rs perform, but the differing tolerances makes sense I guess.

WarRaven said:

Yes, they should get better I'd think after a couple charges.
Crazy.☺

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If I can get even more output after a couple charges than I'm getting now, I'm all for it!

bogart219 said:

How is a battery protected?

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Sorry Bogart, missed your question.
Cells have a disc at top that cuts connection to cell if pressure is to high inside, from abuse or just failure.
Then a protected cell has a electronic PCB on one end that controls.. Over charge, over discharge and voltage cut off.
These further protect cell from again possible abuse and it failure of equipment in light or cell itself.

Maybe take a look at Battery university, hordes of information in the circuit and reasons for its existence.

Cheers, hope that helps some.

bogart219 said:

How is a battery protected?

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See here: http://www.lygte-info.dk/info/battery protection UK.html

That the brightness is less with the protected cells doesn't mean that they deliver less current/power.

When the LED becomes too hot, the brightness goes down and more current is counterproductive.

BringerOfLight said:

That the brightness is less with the protected cells doesn't mean that they deliver less current/power.

When the LED becomes too hot, the brightness goes down and more current is counterproductive.

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The brightness is less with the unprotected cells.

Is this true for any LED or just ones with PID control?