Batteryspace.com's 14500 Li-Ions + charger

[winny]

Although I'm a few hours over time for that gift certificate, I will check out batteryspace's goodwill and post a review anyway.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Li-Ion cells, they come in different sizes and capacities and the 14500 mean that they are 14 mm in diameter and 50 mm long. The last zero tells you that they are cylindrical.

The market for Li-Ions is getting better but you can not walk in to your local hardware store and buy them as with common NiMHs. Batteryspace.com was the only place at the time that had 14500s and at $3.27 if you buy 5 or more, the price was not much to argue about.

I ordered 12 of these for my Monster Mag 1 -project in order to get the voltage high enough. (Li-Ions has got a working voltage of 3.7 volt whereas NiMHs have 1.2 volt). With 750 mAh rated capacity, I expected a decent runtime.

The cells and the charger arrived quickly and without any customs problem at all. I got no tracking for my (international) order but the shipping cost was low.

THE BATTERIES:

The batteries works fine and to everyone at candlepowerforums.com's joy, the 14.1 mm +- 0.2 mm diameter specification was too wide. All of my cells was pretty much 14.1 mm +- 0.05 mm. Four of them fit nicely side by side into an unbored D-sized Mag and a bit tightly, but not too tightly, into modamag's battery adapter. Electrical they where fine although I haven't done any exact runtime-plots with them yet. I expect the 750 mAh claim to be just as good as any NiMH capacity claims.
They deliver more current than they are rated fore but I can't say how life expectancy might change from that. I found one typo about the data on the webpage. They claim 2.5C maximum drain but the datasheet says 2C. If you don't plan to use them for 10000 cycles, I wouldn't worry so much about it.


THE CARGER:

The power supply is made for U.S. main sockets only but runs fine at 230 volt, although you need to modify it to fit first. The charger itself is a small plastic box which can hold two 65 mm long cells or two RCR123 cells and is fortunately for 14500 users no longer sold. The 15 mm gap was a main drawback but if you find something for spacing, it will charge your cells ok. It has a red/green LED on it but you can't see if one battery is done and one isn't. I'm not completely sure that it actually has got two independent charging channels.
As the charger is no longer sold, at lest from what I can see, you should not worry about this. Their new battery holder/universal charger seems like a much better solution.



So, would I buy from them again?
In general? Yes, good prices, fast shipping and structured webpage.
The batteries? If you need 14500s, yes.
The charger? No.

Regards
/Andreas