What's a good IMR 18650 to replace a Sony US18650V3/Konion?

[Syonyk]

I've been rebuilding random old BionX packs lately. They originally ship with a 1600mAh Sony US18650 LiMn/IMR cell (also known as Konion around here).

My builds so far have generally been using Sony US18650V3 cells (2200mAh), but these are becoming hard to find in new condition (and I won't rebuild a pack with used cells).

What's a good cell to look at as a replacement for these? I'm only interested in comparable IMR cells, as the BionX packs rely on the self balancing nature of the LiMn chemistry (no individual BMS wires, just bulk charging, which seems to work fine for them).

The Sony VTC5 cells look promising, but I've seen reports that those are starting to become hard to obtain in reasonable quantities as well.

If I could work a bit more capacity in, I wouldn't complain, but I'm not interested in extreme capacity cells - I want something that's going to be safe, long lived, and reliable for the packs I rebuild.

I should also mention that I'm only interested in direct main brand batteries - so Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, etc. Not the rebranded crap for vapers.

Thanks!

 

[Syonyk]

I've considered them.

The problem is the VTC4/VTC5 appear to be NMC, instead of a straight up spinel LiMn. I'm not sure if that chemistry has the same slight self balancing characteristics that the spinel LiMn cells do - and the packs I'm rebuilding (mostly BionX) rely on that self balancing to keep the pack balanced.

At some point, I'll build a pack from them with some instrumentation to determine if they have the same characteristics (it would be awesome if they did), but without doing that research, I'm hesitant to change the chemistry around.

 

[999zip999]

Self balancing ? The sony cells are made of high quality. And with same capacity and I.R. they stay in good balance if not run down to low, keeping them in balance. There self balancing only works so well. The sony cells work well in parallel then series for the believers. Like 4p11s.

 

[Syonyk]

Are you saying that the VTC4/VTC5 show the same slight self balancing characteristics as the US18650V series, or that it's not needed?

I really don't like switching chemistries on a pack without having done the testing and analysis myself.