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anon1m0us | 6 years ago

This has not been my experience as a consumer trying to buy 18650 batteries for my 3.3V ESP-8266 projects. Is there a good place to buy these? Searching Amazon for them shows me tons of AA and AAA batteries but no actual 18650's. In the past couple years, the price has gone up for me and the availability down.

Are there better options? I've read about 26650's but I have never tried them. Do they last longer? Are they safer? Can I charge them in my NiteCore charger that works great for 18650's?

How can a consumer/tinkerer wanting to scale up production take advantage of these options? The prices may have gone down at Tesla scale, but not at consumer scale.

discuss

skyyler|6 years ago

What are you typing into amazon to only find AA? If I type "18650" into amazon I get multiple options for manufacturer, chemistry, and capacity.

As well, there are a handful of websites that specialize in selling battery cells, do a web search for "18650 for sale"

26650 cells have higher capacity and max current numbers than 18650s on average but your 18650 charger likely won't have prongs long enough to reach the pads.

If they were long enough, it would charge just fine.

esterly|6 years ago

Jehu Garcia is a good reference for batter deals ( note discount code "JEHU" )https://kit.co/jehu/black-friday-deals-2019 found via his channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD7tYQd4XE4

ripexz|6 years ago

Wild guess here but maybe those specific types of batteries went up due to popularity of vaping as they're standard in most mods.

cududa|6 years ago

I mean, people at first scoffed at the idea of GPU prices rising in 2013 and 2017/18 due to crypto mining (both times!)

driverdan|6 years ago

These are bulk B2B prices, not consumer prices.

Do not buy 18650 or other lithium batteries on Amazon. There are many poorly made and outright counterfeit batteries. Amazon banned their sale but 3rd parties selling them keep popping up.

harpastum|6 years ago

In the past I've had success using Parametrek to find good deals (and then doing my homework on the seller to make sure they're legit): http://batteries.parametrek.com/index.html?size=18650

Right now you can authentic 18650 Samsung cells for around $260/kWh, or 21700 Samsung cells for $165/kWh. Those are sale prices, but if you're careful and watch for deals, you can find them.