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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

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Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#11

Post by bradfa »

wmorein wrote: post #6

Apologies for the slightly off topic question but can anyone point me to the best test/comparison of Alkaline batteries vs. the new Lithium rechargeable ones? Older rechargeable AA and AAA batteries were terribly short lived and so mostly useless but I assume Lithium ones are much better?

I've not seen AA or AAA sized lithium rechargeable batteries but modern low-self-discharge NiMH AA and AAA cell batteries are quite good today. The Panasonic Eneloop brand are generally widely available and good value for money. The AA size Eneloops are generally around 2100mAh and the AAA size around 900mAh.

The only downside to modern NiMH batteries today seems to be finding a good and easy to use charger which will properly discharge and/or cycle the batteries without requiring a human to fiddle with it or understand charge rates and when to discharge the cell prior to charging.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#13

Post by bwbmr »

zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

Same here, lots of leaks-- some family even has had a drawer full of unexpired Duracells leak. Myself, I've switched over completely to NiMh except when unsupported by the device to remove the change of leaks (Nest x Yale door lock in particular, which detected NiMh as low battery even when 90% of the cell capacity is remaining). AmazonBasics has been bad with leaks too.

Edit: I have a Powerex MH-C980 and that has significantly made using NiMh easier. Before with a bundled Panasonic charger I had to charge everything in pairs, 4 max. The Powerex I can charge 8 cells individually, turbo charge if I'm in a rush, and see how much energy actually was used if something seems to be eating through a lot of batteries.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#14

Post by dv_dt »

zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

After using Duracell for years for applications where I had to use alkaline, I recently had a set die with major leaks early, basically ruining a nice LED flashlight.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#15

Post by dragontamer »

bradfa wrote: post #11
wmorein wrote: post #6

Apologies for the slightly off topic question but can anyone point me to the best test/comparison of Alkaline batteries vs. the new Lithium rechargeable ones? Older rechargeable AA and AAA batteries were terribly short lived and so mostly useless but I assume Lithium ones are much better?

I've not seen AA or AAA sized lithium rechargeable batteries but modern low-self-discharge NiMH AA and AAA cell batteries are quite good today. The Panasonic Eneloop brand are generally widely available and good value for money. The AA size Eneloops are generally around 2100mAh and the AAA size around 900mAh. The only downside to modern NiMH batteries today seems to be finding a good and easy to use charger which wil…

> The only downside to modern NiMH batteries today seems to be finding a good and easy to use charger which will properly discharge and/or cycle the batteries without requiring a human to fiddle with it or understand charge rates and when to discharge the cell prior to charging.

Only if you're really babying your NiMH cells is it worthwhile to do this.

-----

Frankly, my recommendation is to just throw away NiMH cells once they "go bad" (maybe a discharge/recharge cycle will save them, but they're really not that expensive).

For most consumers out there, the $10 trickle charge that takes 8+ hours is superior, because they'll never cycle the NiMH cells to death. How many dozens of charge/recharge cycles do you need before there's an issue, even with the most primitive of charging strategies?

When it takes months for a typical AA powered appliance to run out of NiMH charge, you realize that these "dozens" of charge/discharge cycles gives a life-span measured in _YEARS_ for these NiMH cells.

After 5 years, your NiMH cells might be on its last legs, needing a full discharge/recharge to get back to full power. Then and only then should you consider a $30 charger to perform this resurrection, except its probably more cost-efficient to just spend $2 and throw away the "old" cell.

You'll need to throw away $20 worth of cells (ie: 10 cells) before your $30 fancy charger with discharge/recharge cycles + coulomb counting is superior to the $10 crap trickle charger. Maybe an RC-car enthusiast will get there (or an electronic-hobbyist), but that's a _LOT_ of charge/recharge cycles before you reach this point. Even with the inferior $10 trickle charge design.

-------

EDIT: That being said, spending $30, $40, or $50 on a higher-end charger because you find it "cool" is probably worthwhile. Coolness is a factor and we're not really talking about a lot of money here. But the $10 charger + buy new cells as needed approach is probably the most cost-effective strategy.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#16

Post by cjbgkagh »

zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

Happened to me. Duracell was my goto and now they leak. I don’t know who to trust anymore. Thankfully I’m not a big battery consumer.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#17

Post by zh3 »

rdl wrote: post #7

Duracell used to be really good about replacing devices if their batteries leaked. They screwed me a couple years ago and refused to replace something (a $50 apple keyboard, I think they gave me $10 for it?). I went from buying exclusively Duracell for alkaline to now just buying Energizer Lithium for everything where it isn't specifically contraindicated (very rare).

Yes, I too have switched to Energizer - zero problems to date (switched from Duracell some years ago).

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#18

Post by klodolph »

dragontamer wrote: post #9

I think the main issue with AA Alkaline is the proliferation of cheap low-self-discharge NiMH cells (aka: Eneloop, but also Energizer and other brands have good LSD NiMH available). A huge number of appliances seem to be designed for the 1.35V NiMH chemistry now. Perhaps a random TV-remote still prefers Alkaline but most seem to work fine with NiMH. ----- Buying a pack of 20 NiMH cells and rotating your collection be…

> A huge number of appliances seem to be designed for the 1.35V NiMH chemistry now.

Yes, this is my experience too. One of the problems with NiMH is that appliances have helpful low-battery indicators which might light up as soon as you put NiMH cells in them, even though the appliance might continue working for a long time yet. A prime example is the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, which was released in 2001. The thing is powered by switching regulators which work fine with the lower voltages of NiMH cells!

Newer appliances have solved these problems. For example, the Yamaha PSS-A50 (a fantastic, inexpensive portable keyboard) has an option to configure the low-battery indicator for alkaline or NiMH chemistry.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#19

Post by klodolph »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #16
zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

Happened to me. Duracell was my goto and now they leak. I don’t know who to trust anymore. Thankfully I’m not a big battery consumer.

As the article states, NiMH has gotten a lot better, and I now use that nearly everywhere instead of alkaline.

It's nice not having to shop for batteries as often. I plugged in a charger behind the TV and batteries in a drawer under the TV. With the price point for Eneloop and Duracell batteries, you break even once you use a rechargeable for the fourth time.

Part of the reason I have it in the first place is that the Roku 4's abysmal remote control goes through a set of batteries once every three months or so.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#20

Post by JTbane »

zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

Yep, have the same experience here. Even worse, I have devices which require batteries to be installed for memory retention, so I can't really remove all the alkalines to prevent leakage.
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