With the aggressive growth of the lithium-ion battery market, several companies have recently offend their version of the lithium-ion battery for consumer purchase. This paper describes the physical design, rate, cycle-lifetime, and self-discharge performance of cells from Sony, Matsushita, A&T, Moli, and Sanyo lithium-ion batteries. The study used a total of 85 lithium-ion cells from these manufacturers. All cells performed as indicated by manufacturers＇ specifications and the performance and design differences are discussed. The design differences include discussion of gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) analysis of the electrolytes, a differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis of separators, the activation of a positive temperature coefficient (PTC), and a comparison of the basic physical parameters of each cell. Performance characterization shows an excellent high discharge rate performance of the A&T and Matsushita cells, an excellent cycle-lifetime performance for Sony cells, and negligible effects of self-discharge.