Faulty battery charge sensors in XHP70.2 flashlights?

I recently got one of the XHP70.2 flashlights with blue LED charge indicators that are all over Aliexpress, eBay, etc, this sort of thing. After running it for a brief amount of time on fresh batteries the charge indicator started blinking and it shut down. Tried it on a second one that a friend had got and it had the same problem. Checked the cells on a charge analyzer (MC3000) and they were at nearly full capacity, about 800mAh down, and 3.89V. Since a number of people have reported problems with battery life on these, I wonder if the real problem is that the charge sensing is faulty, it works OK with a fully charged cell but as soon as the voltage drops a bit it erroneously decides it's discharged and shuts down.

Please allow me to say the following in a brief, concise, helpful, nice, friendly way: Best to avoid junk. Better brand budget lights are mentioned in the section of this forum for such. Again, I am trying to be briefly helpful.

Yes, do not buy flashlights off Ali or Ebay, unless you know the seller is reputable (such as Convoy). They're almost all worthless junk, and possibly dangerous. You can buy decent budget lights for similar prices from places like Banggood and Gearbest.

WalkIntoTheLight said:

Yes, do not buy flashlights off Ali or Ebay, unless you know the seller is reputable (such as Convoy). They're almost all worthless junk, and possibly dangerous. You can buy decent budget lights for similar prices from places like Banggood and Gearbest.

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The friend's one that I checked against was from Banggood, this one, specifically. Since they all seem to be identical, I'm assuming they're either from the same manufacturer or clones of some common source model. I haven't tried a Gearbest one but since they sell it too I assume they've all got the problem.

Yeah, I realise I could have spent a lot more on a decent one, but I was specifically after a zoomable one, and since I'm using it to spotlight possums at night (in the sense of getting them before they get the fruit trees) there's a chance it'll get dropped or damaged at some point so I didn't want to spend a fortune on one.

But mrrrhh, when you think you may drop it, your goal should be something durable, not disposable. I'm not saying spend a lot, but that if your thought is "well it's going to break when I drop it" perhaps that should change to "it won't break if I drop it"……

Perhaps start a thread at the "reccomend a light" part of the general section and you will get reccomendations for lights with better quality controls at the assembly line. Zoomies are definitely pretty handy sometimes, that's for certain so if you start a request make sure to say you prefer a zoomie.