I've received some Sony VTC5 2600mah batteries and I'm worried that hey may be counterfeit. Cosmetically they look genuine, but when I charged them for the first time my charger (Xtar VC4) reports that they were fully charged after only an hour or so of charging, which seemed too fast to me. The display shows 650mah had been put into each battery before they were full. This is my first time using a battery charger with a display, so I'm not sure if I'm interrupting it correctly. It looks to me like either these batteries are genuine and they came 75% charged or they are counterfeit and their true capacity is much lower than advertised. Can anyone here help me determine if they are counterfeit or genuine please?
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Did I received counterfeit batteries?
- Thread starter lonetrail
- Start date
Here's some pictures I took of one of the batteries:
I don't know if the pictures show it clearly but the batteries are a faded green colour, not shiny, the seams are clean and the text and the QR code on the side of the batteries are faded. I believe that points to them being genuine, unless I'm missing something? I would like to try sub-ohming for the first time and I chose these batteries as they had a great reputation for reliability and safety, but since then I've discovered alot of warnings about dangerous counterfeits being very very common, so I'm not sure if I should use them or not.
I don't know if the pictures show it clearly but the batteries are a faded green colour, not shiny, the seams are clean and the text and the QR code on the side of the batteries are faded. I believe that points to them being genuine, unless I'm missing something? I would like to try sub-ohming for the first time and I chose these batteries as they had a great reputation for reliability and safety, but since then I've discovered alot of warnings about dangerous counterfeits being very very common, so I'm not sure if I should use them or not.
They look like the Fake I have...but I cant be too certain.
https://batterybro.com/blogs/18650-...07-warning-sony-vtc5s-sold-today-are-all-fake
https://batterybro.com/blogs/18650-...07-warning-sony-vtc5s-sold-today-are-all-fake
Hmm, this is certainly interesting. I read through the battery bro article on distinguishing between fakes as I have a few sets of vtc4's and 5's I picked up from 101 vape when they had their big battery sale awhile back. Now I am left wondering about these cells legitimacy. 
Vapomizer
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Usually Li-ion batteries have a break in period of around 3 full cycles, during that period they charge and discharge faster than usual, drain them all the way and re-charge them all the way a couple of times and then see how they perform, if they still do that then they could be a fake or old and worn out.
I'm going to hazard and say they are fakes, for 2 possible reasons.
1: The green seems awfully light, it should be significantly darker than that (although it could just be the lighting in the pictures, can't be sure on that)
2: The printing on the cell should be as visible as the QR code is (as in, the QR code is clear, but the printing is barely readable, based on pic 1, I can barely make out a few letters there)
1: The green seems awfully light, it should be significantly darker than that (although it could just be the lighting in the pictures, can't be sure on that)
2: The printing on the cell should be as visible as the QR code is (as in, the QR code is clear, but the printing is barely readable, based on pic 1, I can barely make out a few letters there)
There are absolutely legit VTC5's out there, but those don't look like it. The green color is all wrong, but it could be the lighting/camera. Peel off the sticker?
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1 hour to charge from 3.6/3.7 to 4.2 seems fast, I'm assuming charging at 1 amp. I don't know what to say about that. What was the voltage at when you put them on the charger?
Look at the qr code: each battery should have a different qr code, I think.
peel off the white shipping sticker, under that should be the model name along with codes that will tell you the manufactured date
Look at the qr code: each battery should have a different qr code, I think.
peel off the white shipping sticker, under that should be the model name along with codes that will tell you the manufactured date
I tried two scanners in my phone to see if I could get a hit off that QR code in the above pic. No luck. Not sure those dot-matrix codes are even scannable by normal humans. All I have are 25R's at the house, so there's no real-life test I can do.
They should perform pretty similarly to 25Rs. If it's a big difference you know they're fake.
Also about the bar code, it should scan properly in a QR scanner but it's just a random string of letters and numbers that they use internally. It's not like it's a web link or anything like that.
It was slightly more than an hour, more like 1 hour 20 mins. I'm not sure of the exact voltage for each battery but I think they were around 3.6volts when I first put them in. And I was charging 4 together in a 2 amp charger, so 0.5 amps per battery.