best battery in LED tactical

[tenaciousj]

wondering if anyone out there has any opinions on what is the best CR123 battery to use in an LED. just purchased and am waiting for my first tactical light the Fenix TK10 and am curious about battery run time, strength, and standby time in the light. if i had to guess it would proably be the surefire brand? what about the importance of the mAH rating?

thanks

 

[AMRaider]

I don't know what best CR123 is, but I have had good results with Surefire, Energizer, and Duracell. If you live in the US, these can be found for $1-2 each online (buying in bulk will save you some money per cell).

The higher the mAH rating, the higher the capacity of the battery. For example, a 3V battery with a rating of 1500mAH has 4.5Watthours of energy stored. A 3V battery with a rating for 1200mAH has 3.6Watthours of energy stored.

mAH ratings will vary depending on how hard the batteries are run. The harder the batteries are run (high drain), the lower the capacity. This is very true for alkaline cells; for Lithium, less so. Usually when a battery is "rated" to say 1500mAH, that is for a specific discharge rate (a manufacturers datasheet with tell you what that rate is). The same battery may yield a capacity of perhaps 1200mAH when the current drain is higher (manufacturer's data sheets often show a graph of capacity vs discharge rate).

Hope that helps.

 

[MattK]

Welcome to CPF!

This post is undoubtedly going to be moved to the ' Flashlight Electronics - Batteries Included' forum: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=9
You'll want to start with the sticky post at the top of that forum.

Surefire, Duracell, Energizer and Rayovac brand CR123A's are all made by Panasonic USA and are functionally identical. 'Best' isn't purely subjective so I'll not make a statement on that.

MAh is a measurement of battery capacity and while it's helpful ito know you'll also want to be aware that different discharge rates will result in different capacity (mAh) ratings with different brands of CR123A's so one brand might have a higher rating but actually offer less available capacity at a given discarge rate. There is so good data available in the forum linked above that will give you more details on this subject.

 

[DM51]

Welcome to CPF, tenaciousj.

I'm moving your thread to the Batteries section.