Why is it strange? Despite the fact the LG HG2 is a 3000mAh battery that is rated to 20 amps, at 20 amps continuous discharge down to 3.2V it delivered only 4.93Wh (Watt-hours) worth of energy in Mooch's test results. Whereas the Sony/Murata VTC5A delivered 5.4Wh. Granted, at 15 amps the LG HG2 delivered 5.87Wh, the Samsung 30Q delivered 6.31Wh, and the Sony/Murata VTC6 delivered 6.5Wh. But that's only at 15 amps, and, at 15 amps the Molicel P26A delivers about 7Wh. So the reality is that you'd need to stay at several amps below 15 amps, before
ANY of the 3000mAh 18650s can give you more vaping time than the P26A, and that is despite the latter being only 2600mAh. How is it possible? Watch this:
That said, aside from availability and price, battery aging also plays a part in buying decisions. The slower a battery heats up internally, the slower it will age, as the main enemy when it comes to cycle life is battery temperature. Above 45 degrees Celsius is where a battery starts aging faster than what's considered to be normal aging, or aging resulting typically from normal use. What some tend to forget is that batteries also heat up more if you charge them faster, especially if the charger itself is getting a tad warm underneath the batteries charging, in which case a non negligible amout of heat gets transferred from the charger into the batteries. So charging at half an amp is better for cycle life than charging at one amp, but charging at something maybe halfway in between these two different rates is a better tradeoff between improved cycle life and faster charging, and, charging these batteries even slower than half an amp is not going to improve the cycle life by any significant amount. Now, because charging a 3000mAh battery at 750 milli-amps takes quite a bit of time, and because it is recommended to stay in range of your charger where you can see it (and awake), a lot of people prefer charging at one amp. But charging a 2600mAh battery at one amp takes less time than charging a 3000mAh battery at one amp.
Mooch ran a long test to find out if the VTC6 ages faster than the 30Q or HG2. But he forgot to take into account a few key details. For starters, the VTC6 runs at a higher voltage throughout its entire discharge cycle, thereby it causes a regulated mod to draw less amps. Drawing less amps also means getting less voltage sag, which means getting even more volts, thereby causing this decline in amp draw to be even bigger. Further, drawing less amps causes the battery to heat up slower. Granted, the VTC6 heats up slightly faster than the 30Q, if the amp draw is the same. But my point is, the amp draw is NOT the same... it is slightly lower like I just described. Finally, because the VTC6 delivers more Wh, you need to charge it less frequently, which also helps to improve the cycle life. But when Mooch ran his test to find differences in battery aging between these three different 3000mAh batteries, he pushed them to such inane high temperatures continuously, it simply wasn't representative of what happens in the real vaping world, as these temperatures completely wipe out what subtle differences in battery aging may accumulate over a long period when we vape
NORMALLY. So the classical-old mantra of the 30Q aging slower than the VTC6 was just a hoax, as nobody who vapes is pushing their batteries that hard, when, if drawing that many amps, the VTC5A (and now also the P26A) will age slower
AND perform better
AND take less time to be charged. Yea, if the half dollar (or whatever the price gap between the 30Q and the VTC6 was back at the time when they kept burning me at the stake for knocking on the 30Q, lol...) is what forces you to eat Top Ramen for a week, it would make perfect sense to get the 30Q instead of the VTC6, at least if we can assume both of them are available to you due to where you live. It doesn't matter that the difference in performance between the 30Q and the VTC6 is very small, when you already know that you will be enjoying this difference for a very,
VERY long time.
So this is why you won't get a lot of unbiased battery advice. Only the nerds are interested in which performs best, and, the nerds get ignored, if not burned at the stake,
BECAUSE they are nerds... it keeps happening to me all the time, but it doesn't even bother me at all, because in the end, they're the ones who are sacrificing performance to get nothing in return, not me.