Mine came fairly well charged, maybe needed 30 minutes to top off. And yes they had that awful primer flavor.
There are several different schools of thought on how to treat a new battery, I prefer the one that gets me
vaping faster - that these
batteries do not have memories nor need an 8 hour initial charge to somehow "set" them. A good charger should turn off as soon as it senses a full charge, so that would mean 7.5 hours of a green LED is the only thing gained. But I'm a software engineer, I'm just parroting what others have said to support my own desire to have a working unit immediately