I wonder how many people are aware of the issues here and just pop the suckers into their charger. If that is not safe, Nitecore should specifically state that imo, even though they do not list cr123
in the specs. Impressive and a bit scary how complicated this rechargeable Li-ion issue is.
You are right, at least with the manual for my i4 v2 charger, which is several years old. They don't mention CR123 cells at all, but do mention in passing that the charger is to be used for rechargeable cells only. On the other hand, every Nitecore flashlight manual I have read will explicitly state whether or not CR123 cells can be used with that light.
Part of the problem is the nomenclature itself. When Li-Ions first started to be talked about for our lights, they were called RCR123 cells, standing for
Rechargeable
CR123. For the most part that name has been dropped in favor of 16340 or 16350 as the descriptor for those cells. But there have been times when instead of RCR123 I have seen them mentioned as rechargeable CR123, leading to the impression that CR123 cells, at least some of them, can be recharged. Back in the day, when I was leading an IT team and we were writing tech specs and or proposals, I stressed accuracy and precision in our descriptions so as to make it clear exactly what we were talking about when being read by someone with a sixth grade reading comprehension level. Yes, sixth grade. Believe it or not, that is the comprehension level we were told to write to by the Powers That Be. I think it was more that we could pretty much guarantee understanding if we wrote to that level, rather than say a high school level.