Olight cell temperature sensitivity? ORB-163C05

I have an Olight S1R with the stock cell, which is a [h=1]Olight ORB-163C05 IMR RCR123A / 16340 550mAh 3.7V Protected High-Drain 2.75A Lithium Ion (Li-ion) Button Top Battery.[/h]I was out for a walk tonight with my wife and was using the light intermittently on medium mode. I had the light on for a minute or two at one point, and decided to bust out the Turbo mode. The light went into turbo for about 5 seconds, then stepped back down to medium mode, where I left it for the last 10 minutes of our walk. Ambient temperature is ~12C, so not terribly cold. When I got home, I let the light rest for a bit, measured the voltage at 3.68V, and then warmed it up a bit more against my body. With the light near body temp, I went straight to Turbo, and slowly counted to 30 before I turned the light off. No charging, no removing the battery or disturbing any electrical contacts, just raising the battery temperature 15C or so I would guess, maybe a bit more.

Seems like the light does not like the sort of high drain (600 lumen turbo, not 900 lumen turbo S) when it is "cool". Does this seem reasonable, or do I maybe have a weak sister of a cell? Or maybe this is normal performance for a half drained battery? The cell is about half charged at 3.68V based on past testing I have performed.

I've noticed the same thing. 16340s really don't like very cold temperatures. I've had better success with 18650s in freezing temps, but it would be nice to test the new Nitecore 18650 batteries that are meant to perform better in cold environments.

I did a couple of tests a while back on the 16340s though. During testing the Olight S1 Mini I noticed itworked quite well in freezing temps being able to activate turbo when some other lights didn't, I conducted some discharge tests on 16340 batteries. First I charged them fully and placed them outside in 1-3°C temperature for an hour and brought back inside for discharging. The results would be even worse if I would have done the discharging outside or if the batteries would not have been fully charged before the test.

The internal resistance of a lithium ion battery rises significantly when the cell is cool, which shows as a big voltage drop when a high current is applied. This is why a partly discharged 16340 has often trouble activating turbo on the powerful Olights if you only use the lights outside only intermittently or mostly on the lower levels where the battery doesn't stay warm.

The new usb rechargeable Olight 16340 fares quite well in the test and doesn't sag too much at 1.3A discharge. I chose 1.3A as it's what the S1 Mini draws on turbo. An unprotected Windyfire 600mAh IMR is clearly the best in this test. My old 650mAh Keeppower is pretty much useless during the winter. The Olight 550mAh is the battery that came with the S1R and the Olight 650mAh with the H1R.

Well there you have it. While the temp I was at was not quite as cold as your test, certainly a less than perfect electrical connection somewhere would contribute to a bit more drop in my case. Thanks for sharing your data!

I did note the 550mA Olight is the only one that started at 4.2V, am I correct in assuming that trace is just laying on top of all the others?

I ran a quick test, battery at rest was 3.99V, went to turbo, 3.43V. Would have run it longer but the light was pressed against my leg and it got hot fast! I don't notice this when I am holding the back of the light. Anyway, this test was with the battery inside house temp, of 18C. Unfortunately I am leaving NOW for a work trip, when I return I will run this test with a "cool" battery to see how it goes.

Just ran another test, the battery measured 4.09V resting at 12C ambient temperature. Next I turned the light on to turbo, the battery voltage dropped to 3.13V.

Then I warmed the light up in my pocket for 20 minutes, and measured 4.09V light off. Next I turned the light on to turbo and measured the battery at 3.48V. So about 0.35v difference between in the battery voltage while in turbo mode when the resting temperature difference is 12C and ~27C. Temperature does make quite a difference!!