I recently tested the YDL 18350D and three sets of cells that, in my opinion, are all rewraps of the YDL cell. In the attached discharge graph below you can see how they perform at 10A. If these were Samsung, Sony, Murata, LG, Panasonic, or Sanyo cells the graph lines would be very close together, almost as one thick line. That‘s how we can see their good performance consistency.
Graph: https://imgur.com/a/WSmvTf3
But that is clearly not the case with these 18350’s. There is a fairly large difference between the best performing cell I tested and the worst. It’s not a “grade” issue in my opinion as each set of two cells had a decent performer and a poor performer.
The average performance of each set is roughly the same but the worst performer delivered about 280mAh down to 3.2V at 10A and the best performer delivered about 480mAh. That difference in capacity, which affects vaping time, will be noticeable if you are unfortunate enough to get one of the worst and one of the best.
What can we do about this? Unfortunately, nothing.
These are probably the best performing 18350’s we can choose from now. None of the big manufacturers make 18350’s and I don’t think they ever will. The market for these cells is incredibly small and not worth the investment in R&D and the assembly line that would be needed.
All we can do right now is hope the cells we buy are the better performing ones. But if we think we see a difference between the ones we’re using then at least we know we’re not going crazy. There can be a real difference between 18350’s wrapped by the same company!
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