There was a point in my life where I was going to make my own solar batteries and I purchased around 300 21700 lithium sales to get started... Thankfully I got them from a bulk auctioner for almost nothing because I never ended up putting in the time to make more than one of the batteries as life just kept putting more important things in the way. At this point I have already said fuck it and simply purchased a large supply of premade solar batteries I did still get them from a bulk discount supplier to save some money.
The problem is that now I have a large supply of cells that I don't know what to do with them they aren't the standard 18650s so it's not quite as easy to find things that will accept them. I have found a couple decent usb-c portable power bank cases that will accept these cells and I now have like five of those and it's enough to charge pretty much any phone a good four times over which is nice but I need more uses I would like to put some flashlights in each of my vehicles to always have on hand and it would be neat if I could use these cells I've done a little bit of Googling but it seems like the options to accept this particular size is limited and I'm worried that they might be of poor quality.
Anyone got any recommendations on ones from a reputable supplier?
Wow thank you for the detailed reply the guide and the specific recommendation this should help me find exactly what I need to start making use of at least some of these cells
I hope it helps. Feel free to post about your short list to get additional insights. If you're thinking about several lights for different purposes and you don't have a lot of flashlight experience, it may help to start with one low-cost option and think about what you'd like to be different in subsequent purchases.
I do notice that a lot of these flashlights reference protected versus unprotected cells but I'm not 100% sure what they mean by that here is a picture of the cells I have I don't know if those count as protected or not
Those are unprotected flat tops (bare cells).