I bought this (my first) saber back in December of 2019 and it took awhile to get it, but ever since then I have had some issues with it.
I bought:
Aeon LE v5
Stunt saber only (no sound)
Li-ion battery pack w/ Buckpuck (although I looked today and there is no buckpuck in there)
Recharge port without the cable (had other 2.1mm chargers around)
The saber has always died insanely fast when turned off. I am talking over night it will go through fully charged batteries. I always left it plugged in with a 1.5a charger. If I left it turned on for many hours, the saber would begin to blink and then turn off shortly after the blinking started, which indicated to me that the batteries were dead and that the charger couldn't charge the batteries faster than the saber was using power. It wasn't a normal occurrence for me to leave it on for that long, so I just ignored this issue.
Recently, the batteries couldn't hold a charge at all (10 minutes max on time), so I bought some 14500 3.7v 2800mah batteries and a 2amp 2.1mm wall charger. The batteries came charged and worked perfectly in the saber, everything turned on and looked good. I left it unplugged overnight, tried turning it on in the morning and nothing, batteries were completely drained. I plugged it in to the wall charger, came back in a few hours, unplugged the saber and turned it on. The batteries latest 5 minutes. I noticed that the hilt was very warm, so I decided to monitor the temperature of the batteries charging. They got all the way up to 140 degrees F. I have tried leaving them plugged in for an hour, they get very hot, and the charge only lasts a few minutes.
I have tried other li-ion 14500 batteries and have had the same issue. No idea what is going on with my saber, but now it is just a lightsaber that doesn't have light. I don't know if not having the buckpuck, that I purchased, is the cause of the issues?
You are probably outside of the standard warranty window but if you can show that you ordered with a buckpuck and let customer service know it is not installed, you may be able to get free or discounted help from them. Contact customer service immediately and follow up weekly until you get an answer.
If the battery is getting that hot then you
may have a short somewhere.
You stated the battery life has been very low since you first had it so it could be the lack of buckpuck. Do you see resistors on the wires to the LED?
What LED option did you choose?
Are you able to charge the batteries outside of the saber? If so, do you get different results (idle/usage lifespan)?
How are you determining that the batteries are fully charged?
