Problems with the UltraFire Protected 18650s?

[Gointothelight]

I'm curious if anyone else is having problems with the new UltraFire Protected 18650s.

I've bought about a dozen of these in the last 2 months and already 4 have failed. One would not charge from the start and over the last few weeks 3 more have gone dead and cannot be recharged. I haven't done anything weird with the batteries, they've pretty much just sat in various lights designed for 18650s with little use.

I'm not after a refund or replacement or to trash the product or anything like that... just want to know if I'm the only one... never had an issue with their unprotected cells.

I am now very reluctant to depend on these, not knowing when or if the next one will fail... hopefully not in an emergency. Am I the only one experiencing this? Should I go back to AWs?

 

[DM51]

Ultrafire 18650s have a long and inglorious history of inconsistency and unreliability. There are many threads here about how dismally bad they are. Other sizes of Ultrafire Li-Ion cells aren't much good either. Trustfire ones are no better, just in case you were thinking of changing to them instead.

Do yourself a favour - get rid of them and and get some AWs.

 

[Jerb]

just wanted to say that I bought 2x 18650's and 2x RCR123's a while back and all but one has failed on me.

the 18650 failed on the charger on its first charge, the + end is not brown and discolored, I wont use it in my lights. the RCR123's lasted about 2 charge cycles before dying in my light.

the last 18650 is still running well in my DBS but those are still rather pathetic failure rates

 

[Gointothelight]

Thanks. Just ordered a dozen AWs. I went with Ultrafire because they claimed to have higher mAh but reliability is obviously more important. The Ultrafires are now history. I can't afford to need a light and have the battery fail.