"Murata"? Never heard of them. I have, of course, heard of Samsung and Panasonic - though neither are, IMO, known for being battery manufacturers. But why only mention those 3? What about Energizer, Duracell, Rayovac, and Eveready? What about the store/house brands like Amazon Basics, and Walmart's Great Value or Costco's Kirkland? It makes no sense to me they neglected to list the brands of the 33 out of 424 "low cost" batteries or worse, "brands selling counterfeits". "Counterfeits"? What good is any article warning about "brands selling counterfeits" if it fails to list those brands so we know what brand to avoid? Thanks for posting that article as it does remind users to be aware that there is a problem. But frankly, it left me more in the dark than before I read it. All that article really told me is one battery size from Panasonic is well made, and one battery size from Treasurecase is not. I downloaded the original Lumafield article. It explains well the problem with inferior batteries but really provides no help for consumers in deciding which brands to buy - except for Panasonic and Murata, which they seem to like (promote?). It does point out the following brands of 18650 cell were poorly made: Efest, Vapcell, Trustfire, Treasurecase, Benkia, SOOCOOL and Maxiaeon. The Lumafield article concludes, Really? So "all" non-OEM batteries have "measurable indicators of risk"? That's a pretty absolute statement! Okay, so what are the true OEM cells we can trust? They don't say! I guess only Panasonic, Samsung and a company I never heard of, Murata! Just did a little more digging on Murata. It seems they are indeed a very large and reputable Japanese electronics manufacturer that has been around for 80 years. And their battery division used to be a part of Sony, until they bought that from Sony in 2016. So while I never saw Sony as a battery manufacturing company, I did (and still do) consider them as reputable. Therefore, I will make the same assumption for Murata branded batteries. But still I would hope there are more battery brands than those 3 we can trust. Edit comment: Fixed a couple typos (thanks IMDb!)
I've actually seen quite a few Panasonic batteries over the years, but they are usually included in a device, not hanging on a peg in a store. That said I usually buy Amazon batteries. You get a good size box for a good price and they last long enough. I remember batteries from the '70s and they didn't last long at all. Any batteries today are an improvement.
I too have seen a lot of Panasonic batteries over the years, typically AA and AAA. I have nothing bad to say about them.
