Best place to get 123A batteries?

[splashdown]

I've decided to go with Eric's advice on the LA Police Gear website. Sorry Kevin, I decided against the rechargables this time.

[webber1]

http://www.tacticalresponsegear.com/catalo...roducts_id=3090

I have had good luck with both the pentagon batteries and their lights.....I have heard the same complaints about some of the cheaper batteries not lasting.

[splashdown]

I've decided to go with Eric's advice on the LA Police Gear website. Sorry Kevin, I decided against the rechargables this time.

Just a quick update for those that followed this thread. My first pair of Battery Station CR123A cells have run down with maybe 10 minutes of run time on my M3. That's extremely poor performance compared to the Surefire 123A cells. I normally trigger the light for a couple seconds per day just to check for obstructions in my path when walking through my house in the dark. (Don't want to turn on all the lights and wake the family. Also don't want to trip on kid toys or step in cat puke. Both are very real threats to my morning ritual.)

[EricW]

Update:

It turns out that there are two versions of Battery Station batteries:

- China made, which don't seem to perform well at all with high demand lights.

- US Made, which is where all new Battery Station CR123's originate, which have very good performance characteristics. LA Police Gear now sells the USA version: http://www.lapolicegear.com/bastcrli3vob.html

I'm now having issue with the Chinese versions just like Splashdown did. Sorry man. They seemed good...at first...

I'm going to order a 20 pack and see how it goes. I burn through batteries like crazy, so I'll know pretty quick.

Edited February 15, 2008 by EricW

[Nemo]

I have had excellent luck w/ Evergreen CR123 Lithium Batteres from TAD Gear. I have compared run time in my Surefire L4 and had similar results as Surefire batteries. At $44.40 for 40 batteries its a pretty good deal.

I bought some of these to replace the weak ones in my lights. I don't use the lights too much so can't say anything about performance, but price is very good.

[SiG Lady]

Bear in mind that there's a shipping fee of over $9 on those 20-packs....... Still, they're nicely-priced, compared to other sources. God, I priced them at our local Batteries Plus franchise store and they essentially want $5 each for 'em!!! Acckk!!!!

I now find myself in need of these things and kinda like what I saw on LAPOLICEGEAR. However, it just occurred to me to ask one of my deputy friends (who deals in gear and the like) if HE has a connection for these things...... Hmm......

[Flexmoney]

Bumping the thread...

Anybody aware of good deals going now for these batteries ?

[Dan Sierpina]

Bumping the thread...

Anybody aware of good deals going now for these batteries ?

I've been getting them from the Battery Station. The 50 count box. LA Police gear no longer carries them, and the last couple times I checked, they were always out of stock.

[raz-0]

Consistently available, best batteries and best prices.

For the best 123A cell, I have to say that I have had NOTHING outperform the 4sevens flashlight food cells in terms of runtime in my lights. I've run panasonic, surefire, duracell, energizer, titanium and a couple brands you couldn't find anymore if you looked. They are about $1.90 each 10 at a time.

http://www.4sevens.com/index.php?cPath=53&osCsid=40a42df3ad9077d3c062378625631781

For the best bang for the buck, I buy titaniums from battery junction. They give me about 75%-80% of the runtime of the flashlight food, beat out the surefires by a good bit, and are $1 a pop even in small quantities. There is some variance in performance lot to lot, but they get reasonably long life and kick everything else's butt on price to performance. These come in impedence matched sets of 2 or 3 for maximum safety in multi-cell devices. They also got them UL listed, for what that is worth to you.

http://www.batteryjunction.com/tpen-tcr123a-.html