I know there was an issue a while back with counterfeit batteries on places like Amazon. Is there a good place to buy 18650’s?
https://www.18650batterystore.com
Bought a lot of batteries from there and all have been great.
I just bought a couple from these guys, they even threw in a spare flashlight but I only bought one battery so I don’t have a battery for my flashlight and now I need to go buy another battery.
Ingenious bastards.
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I’ve used this site for a handful of flashlight builds. Good batteries and many other parts in stock.
I’ve used imrbatteries.com a handful of times in the past, no issues so far and my oldest set of batteries are several years old at this point.
Amazon has a problem with counterfeit products across the board, not just batteries.
I haven’t had to buy any for a while so I don’t have a place I can currently recommend, but check out the vaping subreddits, or forums. A lot of vape mods use 18650 batteries, and consequently the forums and subs devoted to vaping are really good resources for finding retailers that sell legit high quality batteries, the ones to avoid, battery safety info, and stuff like tutorials on when and how to re-wrap them if the plastic jacket gets damaged.
Imrbatteries.com is a pretty good site. I use them and illumn.
From someone not in the hobby: what exactly should I imagine under the term counterfeit batteries? Are those batteries that can be used in the same devices as tge real ones but with different specifications or are they just from different lower quality brands than the one advertised?
They are liable to vent (where they overheat and off-gas dangerously) and/or explode. Stay away from counterfeits like your life depends on it, because it very well may.
Low quality, fake specs, and much more likely to catch fire.
