Excellent! Great to have input from some of the CPF experts on the topic, like you and Newbie. Let me just say that I am always impressed by the professionalism and care that go into the reviews, write-up's, and tests on CPF. This ETS post is no exception. I hadn't visited CPF in a long, long time but after this topic came up on ETS, I started visiting CPF more regularly since I'm a flashaholic-in-denial. But darn it, my flashlight collection has already multiplied in the short time that I've been on CPF again. *sigh* But I digress.

The 100% vs 80% differential between the two cells isn't much, plus your observation of how variable the capacity of unused non-premium primary cells can be in a short time is quite alarming to me. So, even grabbing two brand new or unused CR123a cells from the same non-premium batch is not necessarily safe. Yes, surprising and worrisome indeed.

Anyway, thank you, Silverfox, for your input to ETS. Any reservations I might have had about these guidelines due to lack of data are now resolved.