LG ICR18650-HE2 2500mAh batteries

One of my readers contacted me asking me to look into the authenticity of some batteries he received from Nkon and possibly help determine whether they were genuine. In this case, they were LG ICR18650-HE2 2500mAh.

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I’ll say right away that when I told him to send me the batteries so I could “figure out who was at fault,” I was being a bit slow. Their authenticity could have been determined from a photo alone, but more on that at the end of the review.
To be fair, I was the one who added LG to the title. For some reason, the store had replaced the company name with just two asterisks...
By the way, in my opinion, the price is excellent when ordering more than 10.


I’d like to give special mention to the packaging. The person who sent the batteries took great care with it—five stars.
There were two more batteries inside the box, but I’ll cover those another time; they’re still being tested.


Here’s an excerpt from the datasheet, dated way back in 2013. It’s strange that I hadn’t had these batteries on my operating table before now.


They look noticeably different from the ones shown in the store photos. As far as I can tell, this is a new version, both in terms of the markings and in general. For example, earlier batteries didn’t have warning text on them.
The production date is around mid-2021. They’re not exactly old, but it’s a little hard to call them new either—they’re more than two years old. Still, this usually has practically no effect on their performance.

The batteries aren’t used; they’ve simply already been tested, as indicated by the figures showing the measured capacity.


Dimensions and weight—nothing unusual.


They arrived fully discharged, but out of habit I still ran a “normalization” cycle. In the end, I got slightly more than the rated 2500mAh at a discharge current of 1A.


Two charging modes are specified: standard charging at 0.5C (1.25A) and fast charging at 4A.
In standard mode, charging took 2 hours and 25 minutes. In my opinion, the CV phase was a little too long.


At 4A, charging took essentially one hour. I wouldn’t call that fast, but it wasn’t slow either—somewhere in between.


Capacity was measured in eight modes: 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8C, where C=2500mA.
Everything looks good: the capacity matches the rating, but there’s a noticeable voltage sag at 15 and 20A. After all, these are the maximum discharge rates for these batteries.


Temperature at discharge currents of 10, 15, and 20A. In my opinion, 20A clearly causes overheating. The continuous discharge current for these batteries is probably around 15A without an enclosure and 10A in an enclosure.


The second sample is essentially the same.



As usual, after discharging at the maximum current and letting the battery cool completely, I measured the remaining capacity at 0.2C. It came to about 80mAh, which is a good result.


The two batteries’ characteristics match, with no issues here either. The difference in every mode is within the measurement error.


Battery impedance after arrival, after “normalization,” and after all the tests.
The datasheet specifies “less than 20mΩ.” Mine came out not only lower—which is to be expected—but practically identical, which is excellent.


For comparison, I’ll put batteries in the same class on one graph, except for the VTC5D. Its capacity is higher, and it can be discharged down to 2 V.
1. The batteries under review
2. LG ICR18650-HE4 - review
3. Murata US18650-VTC5A - review
4. Samsung INR18650-25R - review
5. Samsung INR18650-25S - review
6. Murata US18650-VTC5D - review

At a current of 0.2C, the results are similar, although the cells under review finish with a higher voltage, which is good. In terms of capacity in Wh, they were beaten only by the VTC6D, but those have a higher capacity to begin with.


At 10 A, the picture changed slightly. The results are almost the same, but HE2 cells show a voltage sag halfway through the discharge. In this respect, they resemble the HE4 from the same company—is that hereditary?


At 20 A, though, both the HE2 and HE4 fell behind the others—not by much, but noticeably. On the other hand, the relatively new Samsung 25S and Murata VTC5D clearly pulled ahead.


Now, about authenticity.
For modern branded batteries, for now you can tell whether a cell is genuine or counterfeit by checking for a matrix code. Don't confuse it with a QR code: although they serve a similar purpose, they are different.
The advantage of this check is that, first, you can easily compare two codes "by eye," and second, the code is unique to each individual battery. So if you have two identical codes, then at the very least the heat-shrink wrap isn't genuine.
By the way, I mentioned before that another way I check authenticity is by seeing how the heat-shrink wrap behaves when overheated. On genuine cells it stays intact; on non-genuine ones, it peels away around the negative terminal.


For example, here's an "original" HE2 from AliExpress.


Even at a glance, you can see that the codes are identical.


There's another difference, though: the positions of the code, markings, and warning text are arbitrary. This is especially clear in the photo below. I assume these three areas are printed by different machines, so they end up in different places. On the Chinese clones, everything is exactly the same.

Interestingly, LG removed the company name from the markings, so it's no longer LGDBHE221865, but simply ICR18650HE2.


Conclusions.
As far as I can tell, these are genuine, relatively fresh batteries, with different matrix codes, specs that match the datasheet, and excellent consistency across the test results. And I'll add that they come at an excellent price!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading—I hope you found it useful.