Digital IR night vision scopes are getting very affordable. With a good IR illuminator, hunters are seeing 100 to over 200+ yards in the dark. But “Digital” means electric! One detail that can ruin your hunting weekend is getting poor quality batteries or heading out with under charged batteries.
Good IR illuminators usually runs on rechargable 18650 lithium-ion batteries. As your batteries drain in voltage, your illuminator gradually gets dimmer and dimmer. Remember, the human eye can not see the infra red light from your illuminator so except for the performance of your night vision scope, you have no indication that the brightness of the illuminator is decreasing. A battery with a low mAh rating when charged will start off bright, but the voltage will drain faster than good batteries. Get setup and then 20 minutes or less into your hunt you start wondering why your system is not working as well as you expected it to. Digital IR night vision and I2 (intensifier tube) night vision benefits from the IR illuminator light. When the IR dims, your system dims. I stress this point. It would be better if the illuminator just shut off but it doesn’t. A hunter would know its time for another battery if it just shut off.
The 18650 lithium-ion batteries sold today are labeled from about 2100 mAh (milliamp hours capacity) all the way up to over 9000 mAh. So if you order the 9000 mAh batteries from China on Ebay you should be ok, right? That is what I thought but after doing some research I discovered that 18650 lithium-ion batteries can not physically be made to go that high. The offshore manufacturers are actually selling a lie. They just lie about the mAh rating for marketing purposes. After all, how many people know that much about battery technology except electrical engineers.
XTAR VC2 battery charger
With the average battery charger you don’t know the real mAh rating of your batteries or the charge level. Don’t risk your hunting trip, get something like the XTAR VC2 USB LCD Screen Battery Charger Capacity Tester. It has an LCD display that show the batteries voltage and mAh level so you know for sure and don’t have to risk bad batteries messing up a great hunting weekend.
Get good batteries and a good battery charger/tester. That way, a $2.00 battery won’t mess up a priceless hunting opportunity.
Order the XTAR VC2 Tester/Charger at Digitalcrosshairs.net
Related info:
How to tell a fake 18650 battery:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-know-a-fake-18650-battery/
Review of 18650 Batteries: