What's your favorite place to buy batteries and chargers?

I see lots of love for Mountain Electronics and Illumn on here, but what other places do you all turn to for cells and chargers etc?

Battery Junction. Have bought a lot of flashlights, batteries, and chargers from them.

Another one for battery junction. The times I've bought for them, they package things very well.

Two Panasonic NCR18650B unprotected batteries with case can be purchased for just under $13.00 on Ebay. You mentioned you had a meter and could check the voltage of the battery. When you get these they should be at a charge of around 3.62v (ie: that's the voltage when they ship new). Run your light at this level and see what it does. If you can get all your modes, then run it on high for 5 to 10 minutes to drop the voltage. Check with your meter to get a feel for how fast its dropping. Get the battery down to 3.00v or even 2.80v and see what your light will do. If its obvious to you that you're losing the higher power modes, then you might be fine with the less expensive non-protected Panasonics because you'll know far in advance that you shouldn't be running that light anymore without recharging that battery.

If wanting a protected, (Eagletac and Nitecore lights require them because of their requirement of button top), then the ones that are probably the most popular use this very cell (Panasonic NCR18650B) and add their protection circuit to it. There are several good brands that use the NCR18650B. Olight, EagleTac, Keeppower among a few. Just shop for who has the best price. Hard to beat the $10.99 Keeppower at Illumn. In the past, the time that I have purchased batteries has been when I was piggybacked onto another order thus the shipping was negligible.

In addition to those already mentioned. I have had good success with Fenix-store. Great folks and fast service. I haven't had a problem for them to fix, so I can't comment on service if you have a issue.

Since Lighthound's closure, I have purchased genuine AW cells from RTD vapor

thslw8jg said:

Since Lighthound's closure, I have purchased genuine AW cells from RTD vapor

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Good price on Keeppower there.

Where is the best place for non-knockoff Nitecore D4 chargers?

Illumn has great prices on the nitcore chargers

my goto places:

ru.nkon.nl for chargers and batteries

BG, GB for coupon deals on chargers and batteries

FT for battery/charger accessories

For me, living in Germany, it is Akkuteile.de and eu.nkon.nl.

Goinggear.com

I've gotten many batteries and a few xtar chargers from them.

Fast shipping and good customer service. They reply to emails fast too.

Balog said:

I see lots of love for Mountain Electronics and Illumn on here, but what other places do you all turn to for cells and chargers etc?

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rtdvapor.com
imrbatteries.com

And batteryjunction for coin cells.

I like www.fasttech.com

I've been buying from Amazon.

I buy most of my stuff off from Amazon. I recently bought 2x Olight 3400mah 18650 protected batteries for $24.95 and one of them was DOA. I sent a message to Amazon customer service and they gave me a full refund on both batteries and said keep the good one they didn't want it shipped back. So I ordered another pair of them and they worked great and have the spare too. The only issue is they don't always have what I want and prices change so much. I just looked at Amazon and they want $35.95 fro those same batteries now. I am currently looking for a better place to buy good 18650 batteries. I think I may try mtnelectronics and research some of the other places posted here. I am skeptical of Ebay b/c of the fake batteries you hear about.

GearBest, good deals and coupons codes & good customer service here on the CPF side.

Illumination Supply! They are 10 minutes away from my house and have some great discount codes.

Depends on the battery. Mtn Electronics for GAs, Illumination Supply for others. IS has some great deals on some things and they generally ship fast.

Ordered from Amazon once for Keeppower protected 18650 and 16650. Got those from Doingoutdoor who seems trustworthy, plus I don't know of anyone trying to fake Keeppower wrapped cells. Some batteries like the 25Rs I'm a lot more skeptical of getting those from Amazon. Some reviews mention fakes on certain popular batteries, and it's not worth the risk to me nor the hassle of returning them.

Amazon for me.

Just ordered the Maha C9000 from there, but intentionally made sure to purchase the one distributed by Thomas Distributing. TD was recommend by Maha when I interacted with one of their customer support representatives. I also read nothing but good reviews on Thomas Distributing.


Ordered my batteries through Amazon as well. They were actually sold by Amazon, not a second party.

Amazon is good just verify the seller is a reputable website