Did I receive a bad battery?

[ecallahan]

I received 4 UltraFire 14500, 900 mAh batteries from Deal Extreme. One of the batteries reads 0.6 volts and will not charge. Is there anything I can do to 'bring it back to life' or should I just try and get a new one? Thanks,

 

[mudman cj]

Sorry, it's toast. You will have to ask for a new one.

 

[DM51]

There have been innumerable complaints here about Ultrafire batteries - far more than any other brand. They have a very poor reputation indeed.

That particular cell is unrecoverable and potentially dangerous, and the other 3 are probably not much better.

 

[ecallahan]

Wow, thanks for the advice.

 

[labrat]

The Ultrafire batteries are cheap!
Less than 6 dollars for 2? Right?
I have bought 16 Ultrafire rechargeable non-protected LiIon cells over the last 2 years;
One has failed completely, takes zero charge according to the meter, but works still with one of my LED lights!
Of course, it is only to be recycled, but at my nightstand, does not need that long runtime, and a spare is always close at hand!
One never reaches more than 80 % of full charge, also as by the charge meter, and still good for my pocket light.
I have also bought 2 of the protected cells from DX, of which one failed completely after a few months, and was sent into the recycle bin.

I have 3 protected cells from AW, one of these is totally not working, takes no charge.

Which ones are showing the poorest quality?

DX cells is not dangerous to use, but you should know what you are playing with, and not mix cells with very different characteristics together.
Use some meter to find what capacity and what charge they have, if you intend to use more than one cell in a light.
But that cell that does not take any charge, better to dump it!

 

[DM51]

labrat, I have read your post three times now in an effort to extract some sense out of it, but I can find no coherent or good advice in it at all except for the very last 2 words.

 

[mighty82]

I'm happy with all of my ultrafire/trustfire batteries. They have about the same capacity as any other batteries, and I have not had any problems yet. Trustfire's 18650 batteries have even been tested to have better capacity than more expensive ones like aw's. They are also less than one third of the price. It's a no brainer to me.

 

[DM51]

I have not had any problems yet.

(selective quote; my emphasis, not his)

 

[mighty82]

You REALLY have something against them, don't you? Like I said, I have not had any problems with either trustfire/ultrafire or AW's YET (everything fails eventually). But I have seen several threads about failing batteries from both.

If one of my AW batteries was to fail, I would be disappointed. If one of my trustfire/ultrafire's fails, I really won't care, because they are cheap budget batteries that have saved me a lot of money. And they give me the same performance as any other brand. Even if more expensive brands had 20% higher performance I can't justify paying 300% more for them. I can buy a whole bunch of those cheap batteries and if one fails, who cares.