CR 123 Batteries

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uduman

Joined
May 28, 2006
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I EDC an Inova X5. As far as I am concerned it is an excellent flashlight. It is relatively inexpensive, tough, is well-designed, can be used for tactical and general use and best of all--it runs for 20 hours on 2 CR Batteries.

Last year I purchased a box of surefire CR batteries and have already gone through it. I have found that these batteries only have a 5-6 hour burntime in my light. The duracell batteries it came with lasted the full 20 hours. I know that surefire designes their batteries to burn fast. I was wondering if anyone out there has tried other "packaged" brands of CRs. Ultimately I am cheap and don't want to spend $7 for a pair of duracells.

Thanks--
 
Man, that is a big difference in runtime. Will the Inova run on rechargeable 123s?
 
normal rechargeable Li ions come off the charger at 4.7 volts while primaries are 3 volts. big difference. There are, however, now internally regulated rechargeables that give 3 volts with a little compromise in capacity. They can be found at lighthound.com. Another disadvantage of rcr's is the self discharge rate. Even without use the batteries will loose half their capacity in a month or so, If you really depend on your light primaries are the only way to go. I use unprotected rcr's in my edc (b42xr) and baterrystation.com primaries in my emergency lights (tac, weaponlights, and the light in my truck. The battery station lights can be found at lighthound.com or batterystation.com for as low as $1.00 apiece, they do not have the same capacity as sanyos or duracells, but for 80% of the price the batterystation primaries are still an excellent value.
 
uduman said:
Last year I purchased a box of surefire CR batteries and have already gone through it. I have found that these batteries only have a 5-6 hour burntime in my light. The duracell batteries it came with lasted the full 20 hours. I know that surefire designes their batteries to burn fast. I was wondering if anyone out there has tried other "packaged" brands of CRs. Ultimately I am cheap and don't want to spend $7 for a pair of duracells.

Thanks--
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That sounds rather strange to me. Duracells are generally regarded as the best CR123As, very narrowly better than Energizers. Surefires are only slightly lower performance than the expensive store brands, but significantly cheaper.

But even though a Duracell should outlast a Surefire battery, the difference should not be as big as 5-6 vs 20 hour runtime. Please don't think that I'm calling you a liar, but are you sure the old batteries really lasted 20 hours? Remember, 20 hours is the advertized runtime of the old version of the X5. The newer X5 (uses brighter Nichia CS LEDs) has a runtime of about 6hours before 50%. The new version is also way brighter. I haven't seen a runtime plot of the old X5, but I'm guessing that at 20 hours, it's significantly dimmer than with fresh batteries (much less than 50%).

As for rechargables, I'm fairly certain that the 3.0V regulated li-ions won't fit the X5. Few, if any, 123A based Inova lights are rechargables friendly.

If you're still apprehensive about getting more SF batteries, I would suggest getting a single pair of Duracells again, and actually measuring/monitoring the brightness over time. If you don't have a lightmeter (even one for cameras will work, because even though it might not measure in terms of lux, it'll still give you comparisons), have a fresh pair of other batteries to compare them to after a few hours, several hours, etc. And/or have another flashlight to compare it to.
 
If the Duracells work as well as you say they do, and you want the extra performance, I would say it is worthwile to splurge in another pair. Actually $7 for 2 Duracell's isn't a half bad price. I've seen Duracells run upwards of $10-$12/ pair.

Generally, the 'no-name' batteries will give a tad lesser longevity performance than the Surfires, but for what I get them for, they are a good fit for EDC.
 
I have never seen that much difference in runtime in the same light based on full batteries from different manufacturers. I'll echo what Planterz said: both the fact that the true X5 runtime is around 6 hours (to 50%), and that any longer measured runtime is perhaps based on a much dimmer lower threshold for the end of the burn. I looked on web.archive.org for FLR's original X5 review, and I see that it doesn't include a runtime graph for the "old" version of the light.

For lithium primaries, I use Battery Station cells.
 
I've tested most available Cr-123 batteries thru a CBA battery analyzer. There's only a few actual manufacturers of these cells, and most brands are OEM'ed.

The best cells I've seen are Energizer, followed by Streamlight's private labeled cells (Both are made in the same Panasonic owned plant).

I run almost all my 123 powered lights on Streamlight cells, and have never had a problem. I've had a lot of dead SF cells, sometimes 4 dead cells in a box of 20, so I have little confidence in them.

Avoid the Chinese manufactured cells, as most don't have the built in safeguards that major labeled cells have.


--dan
 
i use SF, energizer or dura cell and while the duracells might last a tad longer its not a whole lot, more like minutes vs hours, my experience anyway.
 
Avoid the Chinese manufactured cells, as most don't have the built in safeguards that major labeled cells have.
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My no-names are Universals, made in Texas.
 
I have been using SF's batteries for many years now, and have never had any problem.
 
uduman said:
Last year I purchased a box of surefire CR batteries and have already gone through it. I have found that these batteries only have a 5-6 hour burntime in my light. The duracell batteries it came with lasted the full 20 hours. I know that surefire designes their batteries to burn fast. I was wondering if anyone out there has tried other "packaged" brands of CRs. Ultimately I am cheap and don't want to spend $7 for a pair of duracells.

Thanks--
Click to expand...

Surefire does not, and never has designed their batteries to "burn fast". Stop spreading misinformation. How would that even work?

Anyway, AFAIK, the the top-tier CR123A batteries were Sanyo/Streamlight/Surefire/Pentagonlight/Duracell as per the candlepowerforums tests.

Remember; clean contacts prolong battery life and increase brightness. If your runtime is much shorter than before you may want to invest in some ProGold/Deoxit cleaning solutions.

jfindon,

I believe those energizer batteries are Made in China now. Compared to American made batteries the Chinese batteries have a much lower 100% rate out of the package. Just my experience.
 
Do you guys have any comments regarding buying batteries from www.amondotech.com? They have very cheap 'titanium' cells and sanyo cells for 1.75. I have recently just purchased a princeton tec apex pro headlamp and am looking to buy 10-12 batteries.

The titanium cells do seem to have a kind of blowoff valve or something so they don't explode on an airplane, which I will be carrying these batteries when I go backpacking later this summer. Or I can stick with the sanyos which they seem to have a good price. Does anyone know whether these sanyos (link below) are the good ones or made in china ones?

http://www.amondotech.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=717
 
I tried to use surefires in a custom flashlight passaround, it only last about 30 seconds before the light started blinking to indicate low voltage. Duracells seem to work fine for the 2 or 3 minute stints.

Good to know about streamlights cells I wasn't going to buy more SF cells.
 
"Surefire does not, and never has designed their batteries to "burn fast". Stop spreading misinformation."

I am not spreading misinformation. Surefire originally advertised their batteries as optimized for running in lights that have a burntime of two hours. That is a fast burntime. The original Inova X5 is designed to give off light for 20 hours. None of the Surefire batteries I have have lasted more than 6 hours. Hence my inquiry.
 
uduman said:
"Surefire does not, and never has designed their batteries to "burn fast". Stop spreading misinformation."

I am not spreading misinformation. Surefire originally advertised their batteries as optimized for running in lights that have a burntime of two hours. That is a fast burntime. The original Inova X5 is designed to give off light for 20 hours. None of the Surefire batteries I have have lasted more than 6 hours. Hence my inquiry.
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This optimization is interesting. I am going to be using my 123 cells in headlamps, etc which have relatively long burn times...

Do you think that most of these cells manufactured by light makers are optimized for lights with relatively short burn times? I have been doing a little more looking and searching and pentagonlight is selling made in usa cells for 1.40 a pop, a pretty good deal for a good brand. I am just concerned if they will last many hours of use?
 
Surefire, Streamlight, Ray-O-Vac and Energizer cells are made by Panasonic in Columbus, Georgia.

They may tweek the cell, slightly, but there's not a whole lot that can be done to a 123 type cell to increase capacity, etc.
 
uduman said:
Surefire originally advertised their batteries as optimized for running in lights that have a burntime of two hours. That is a fast burntime. The original Inova X5 is designed to give off light for 20 hours. None of the Surefire batteries I have have lasted more than 6 hours. Hence my inquiry.
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No. Surefire batteries are optimized to run in lights that have a strong current draw, not a set runtime. That and the overwhelming majority of Surefire lights only have a runtime of 1 hour so optimizing their batteries for 2 hours does not make any sense.

Read up on CR123 Batteries.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=67078

If Surefire batteries are not running up to par in your light either the batteries were defective from the factory, the light is defective or you were misinformed from the beginning.

Surefire, Streamlight, Ray-O-Vac and Energizer cells are made by Panasonic in Columbus, Georgia.
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Source? Last I heard no one had nailed down exactly who was making Surefire batteries but it seemed that Duracell was the fan favorite.
 
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