The Final Voltage

[SHiBBY]

Howdy guys!

I've an interesting topic today! As is the case with mech mods, there' no way of telling what voltage your battery is at short of removing amd testing it, or klapping it onto something like the Smok Omnitester. Luckily with frequent mech use, you start to realise when performance takes a sudden dip and it's time to change. My question here is, when you change batteries, what is the remaining volts on your used ones? Do you ever get even close to the minimum recommended discharge voltage for your batteries? I make use of Efest 38A 18650s and a Nitecore D2 which obviously shows where your batteries are at.

Upon changing, my used batteries are always between 3.40V and 3.60V. Like clockwork.

 

[johan]

AW's as well as Efest's between 3.80 and 3.83V

 

[Andre]

Yip, mine are all around the 3.8 V mark, but can tolerate down to 3.7 in a pinch. Even on my regulated devices I can discern a power loss from around 3.7 V, despite what the screen says.

 

[zadiac]

3.7 - 3.8

 

[SHiBBY]

Great stuff seeing all the replies! I think it's interesting to see the matching numbers, seeing as it's all about feeling here. You realize a drop in performance, and change the battery accordingly but just take a look at how the results match to a fraction of a Volt.

 

[Christos]

I see a drop in performance at about 3.8v too but I usually let them go to about 3.4 to 3.6v depending on how far away from the charger I am.
I find that there is a sweet spot between 4v and 3.8v and another sweet spot from 3.6v to 3.4v.

 

[GerharddP]

In the mini I change the batts at 3.6-3.7V. Reason is I've been vaping on 0.5ohms for so long now that I can feel the battery sag almost to half a volt.

 

[BumbleBee]

I'm on regulated mods these days so the batteries are at 3.47v when they hit the charger because that's where the Subox cuts them off. Mechs on the other hand are a bit hit and miss for me, here it depends on the build and the juice as well as the mood I'm in. I've taken batteries down to 2.8v once or twice without even realizing the drop in quality, weird I know. Usually though when I put my mech batts on charge they're anywhere between 3.8 and 3.5v

 

[Silver]

Hi @SHiBBY
My batts are always either 3.7 to 3.8 V when i take them out of my Reos
I do notice the drop off but I use the juice bottle as my "battery gauge"
I always put in a new batt when i fill up the juice bottle so i can glance at the juice bottle level and know where I am. But I can feel it as well.

The interesting part about all this for me is that we only use a fairly small portion of the battery's "range". I.e. From 4.2V down to 3.8V. So even if the battery is rated at say 2000mah , that rating is for discharging it down much lower. I suspect we are only actually using about 30% of the battery's rated capacity.

 

[moonunit]

3.5v or just under, basically when the reg mod says no more.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Riaz]

There is a noticeable drop after 3.8v for me, which is when i charge batteries.

 

[SHiBBY]

Well, looking at using batteries within recommended ranges, which would be a full charge at 4.20V down to the recommended minimum of 2.80V, that would give us a range of 1.4V to work with. Most guys seem to take it down to around 3.60-3.80V before changing which is a usage of 0.40-0.60V, or 28-43% of the available capacity. That leaves more than 50% before you reach a level that starts being bad for your batteries, meaning it's a risk that for most users is fairly negligible.

Some interesting stats!

 

[Silver]

Indeed, thanks for the calcs @SHiBBY
So we are only using 28-43% of our battery capacity then
Henceforth this will be referred to as the "SHiBBY portion of actual battery usage"

 

[Alex]

Usually about 3.7 - 3.8


Sent from iPhone

 

[JW Flynn]

mine usually ends up between 3.6 and 3.7, but I have had it in some extreme cases where I was at a party (or that one beer after work that turns into much more than one beer, eish...) with only one mod (or without a change of batteries on me) where I went down to 3.4 / 3.5 but by then you can definitely feel the difference... it starts feeling like you have over dripped (we all know the feeling) and you actually double check and realize that this might be a battery problem... LOL

Another thing I also want to add here... when using the Smok X Cube 2, right down to where it says to you that the battery is flat, pop into charger and it actually indicates 3.3 volts..... (still within acceptable range as the lowest these efest batteries I use are allowed to go before damaging the batteries is 2.8 volts) So it does end up going allot lower than I was used to on my mechs, but still safety wise and battery life expectancy wise, 100%

 

[Riaz]

Electronic mods will some what push the desired output regardless of its voltage

This is the main difference between electronic and mech mods.

 

[DoubleD]

Yip, Im also around the 3.8 mark