This page is a permalink to the latest quarterly recommendations for lithium-ion cells to be used with Ubik.
Please always link to this page URL as a whole and not directly to the individual image files, nor the quarterly blog posts. This way your link should always stay up-to-date, whereas the images themselves will change each quarter and thus become quickly out-dated.
- Always buy your cells from reputable sellers, do not buy from Amazon, Aliexpress or other marketplaces, you would put yourself at very high risk of getting at best B-grade cells and at worst outright counterfeit cells, which could cause a very serious hazard including risk of disfiguring explosion, loss of limbs or setting your house or other properties on fire.
- Stop immediately using any cell that has a damaged wrap near the positive (top) terminal. Bring the cell to your nearest vape-shop and have them re-wrap it for you. Serious risk of short-circuit upon insertion in the battery holder otherwise.
- Stop immediately using any cell that becomes hot to the touch during operation. Luke-warm is OK, uncomfortable to hold is not, and a sign the cell is not up to the task anymore and should be recycled for less-demanding uses, like a low power flash-light.
There are two separate recommendation lists, one for each cell size. 18650’s can be used in Ubik 21 with the provided adapter, but they will not unlock its full potential compared to real 21700’s. Whereas Ubik 18 can only use 18650’s.
Here are the 18650 cells recommendations (click to enlarge):
Here are the 21700 cells recommendations (click to enlarge):
Note: cell model names in the images match more or less the color of their actual shrink-wrap.
Note: the “tabless” term denotes a recent manufacturing technique development which considerably reduces the cell internal resistance. These cells have a much higher constant discharge rate and offer currently the best performance in terms of current output. Using them in Ubik will yield a hotter vape as their voltage sags less under load.
Note: the latest breed of 6000mAh and over 21700’s entering the market are at the moment not physically compatible with Ubik 21 (they are too large and out of specs) but I will be testing a work-around in the coming months, so this might change. In which case Ubik 21 users could really enjoy up to 2 times the run-time compared to the best 18650 (which are around 3000mAh only).