Hey what happens when a battery reaches the manufacturers listed life cycle? Does it just stop taking a charge or something?
Long before that point performance will suffer greatly. As capacity drops so will your initial loaded volts. In a VV
mod using stacked cells it just means shorter vapetimes. But in a single, unfettered cell mod this drop in performance and vape quality will start to become apparent much, much sooner.
Check out these charts from two premier manufacturers.
So it would appear the Sanyo has taken a ~10% hit at about 150 cycles.
You will also hear tons of anecdotal evidence of how long AW cells last and why they are worth the money. It's the nature of the beast, every day, every charge sucks a little life out of ANY cell.
When I first heard about the high drain 18650 Panasonic cell I saw this rather amazing test, the AWs look owned.
But I should have paid more attention to the fine print. The Panasonics were new, the AW were not.
I keep reading words like "reliability", "durability" and "long-term" when talking about reasons to buy AWs. So it stands to reason that the AW should be able to hold is own after a year or so. These 9 runs were all done TODAY (8/23/11).
Usage: Not much. Occasionally would fill in for a LiCo in a 1.4A light and rarely run a ROP Hi. Most of the time they have been stored. Some of that time was fully charged just sitting on the shelf and the rest of the time was stored @ 3.8v in the fridge.The cells have never sat after being discharged and I followed charging guidelines specified by AW, but almost always charged them at or above 1C.
Now compare that chart to SuperT's new vs.new test.
The
new AWs do quite well, holding a higher voltage over the Panasonics for their stated mAh.
Food for thought.
