Surefire volts?

So brand new I measure them at 3.2 volts. I put two in each of my 6P's to check out the P60's I got in. 3 minutes tops. Just for the hell of it before I put them up I checked volts again and now they read 2.9. I normally use 18650 or other rechargeable batteries and when I do use primary batteries I don't really check the batteries like this just use them till they die. Does this seem ok or what?

Check out the discharge curves, like here ...

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?67078-123-Battery-Shoot-Out

Pretty big initial dip, especially under heavy draw.

So it's pretty normal. Just takes a big dive at first then tapers off and settles down and just keeps on trucking???

Yep, for moderate to heavy drain I've found that that is exactly the behavior of CR123 cells.
Once they rest(assuming you didn't run them for too long) they bounce back to above 3.0 volts.

Surefire(and other brand) cells in my EDCL1T do that: when new they are about 3.25V, then after a short 30sec burst at high mode they dip below 3.0V, then when I check them the next day they are abou 3.10 or so.

At about 2.85-2.9volts resting I find that they are close to depleted., but still quite useable for some time.

RobertMM said:

Yep, for moderate to heavy drain I've found that that is exactly the behavior of CR123 cells.
Once they rest(assuming you didn't run them for too long) they bounce back to above 3.0 volts.

Surefire(and other brand) cells in my EDCL1T do that: when new they are about 3.25V, then after a short 30sec burst at high mode they dip below 3.0V, then when I check them the next day they are abou 3.10 or so.

At about 2.85-2.9volts resting I find that they are close to depleted., but still quite useable for some time.

Click to expand...

That is what I have found too.

I did a load capacity test on an unused SF CR123A with exp date of 09-2027. Open circuit voltage was 3.25v. Load was mild at only 0.200 amps. (Was using the Fluke meter to verify current). I noticed that it dropped off of the open circuit voltage very quickly and I can't remember exactly but it seemed to hover in the 2.75v area +/- 0.1 v for a long time. Once it got down to 2.0 volts it dropped rather rapidly and the test shut down at 1.00v. After that it did recover somewhat voltage wise but with any type of load, the voltage sags. I put it into a SWM V11R and could run it on a low level for many hours before it truly was exhausted. Capacity at 0.2 amps down to 2.0 volts came in around 1500mAh and somewhere around 1550mAh down to 1.0 volt at the 0.2A load.

I have tested a few CR123, their curves are something like:

Surefire used to sell a little box that would hold eight or so pairs of CR123A cells. I believe they called it a hurricane light or some such. It had a small incan light in the top, and a manual selector to connect a pair of the cells to the bulb. It was designed to use up that last little bit from cells that were no longer usable in regular lights. I think I got one of the last ones about ten years ago.

Yep there 150 plus bucks now. Always wanted one but not that bad.