Bottom line: These have recently been shipped with "Made in China" stickers on them. I have tested them and these appear to be genuine Sony VTC5A batteries manufactured in the Koriyama, Japan plant. The ones I received were manufactured in June 2017.
Photos: https://imgur . com/a/UdBKG
(Sorry for the split link. ECF doesn't display Imgur images properly).
The tooling marks near the top of the can are different than VTC5A's made earlier though. The ring at the top of the can is wider than earlier cells (see the red arrows in the photos). This is visible through the green wrap of the cell.
Their performance is a touch worse than my "reference" VTC5A's, running at about 0.05V lower for the entire discharge. The two cells I tested were very consistent though in performance, something I expect from Sony cells (Samsung, LG, and Panasonic/Sanyo too).
These VTC5A's do run a bit cooler than others I have tested. This could mean that the chemistry was tweaked by Sony. That could explain the slightly lower voltage-under-load too. The lower voltage could also be due to these cells being a slightly lower grade. There's no way to tell right now.
I don't know why there are "Made in China" stickers on these cells but they were not put there by Sony. They wouldn't be an indicator of these being fake cell's either as no company would purposefully draw that kind of attention to cells they want everyone to think came from Japan.
The stickers might be there to comply with certain country-of-origin labeling regulations, if the distributor is located in China. I'm not concerned about why though as these are genuine VTC5A's and can be used as such. The performance differences between these cells and ones made earlier, or in another plant, are minor and probably won't even be noticed when vaping.
Photos: https://imgur . com/a/UdBKG
(Sorry for the split link. ECF doesn't display Imgur images properly).
The tooling marks near the top of the can are different than VTC5A's made earlier though. The ring at the top of the can is wider than earlier cells (see the red arrows in the photos). This is visible through the green wrap of the cell.
Their performance is a touch worse than my "reference" VTC5A's, running at about 0.05V lower for the entire discharge. The two cells I tested were very consistent though in performance, something I expect from Sony cells (Samsung, LG, and Panasonic/Sanyo too).
These VTC5A's do run a bit cooler than others I have tested. This could mean that the chemistry was tweaked by Sony. That could explain the slightly lower voltage-under-load too. The lower voltage could also be due to these cells being a slightly lower grade. There's no way to tell right now.
I don't know why there are "Made in China" stickers on these cells but they were not put there by Sony. They wouldn't be an indicator of these being fake cell's either as no company would purposefully draw that kind of attention to cells they want everyone to think came from Japan.
The stickers might be there to comply with certain country-of-origin labeling regulations, if the distributor is located in China. I'm not concerned about why though as these are genuine VTC5A's and can be used as such. The performance differences between these cells and ones made earlier, or in another plant, are minor and probably won't even be noticed when vaping.
