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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

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Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#151

Post by petee »

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…

90% of my Duracells from the past decade have leaked and ruined equipment, and all well before expiration date. Ive been now telling my family and friends to avoid at all cost

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#152

Post by Johnny555 »

dragontamer wrote: post #15
bradfa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing I like about the $30 charger is that it will do a discharge test and tell you how many mAh of capacity the battery has -- much better than having to figure out which battery is bad by rotating them through your bike light until you isolate the bad one.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#153

Post by djrogers »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #137
djrogers wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works well until you have kids running around... You going to put rechargeable cells in that Elena of Avalor wand your 4 year old chases the dog with? And her talking unicorn? How about all the light sabers? In my experience, most of those types of toys don't go through batteries fast enough to justify a NiMH - they'd be in there for years. Invariably one of the kids will wind up mixing NiMH/LiIon/Alkaline in a…

I do this with my child. Shrug, I just buy more amazon rechargables and while it feels expensive its still a fraction of what buying non-rechargables cost over time. The only exception is his collection of lightsabres. Its like 3 AAA per and he and he has 6 or 7 of them, maybe more. So for those I bought a pack of alkalines and forgot about them. I needed batteries and just bought them from CVS because I was in a hur…

> I just buy more amazon rechargables and while it feels expensive its still a fraction of what buying non-rechargables cost over time.

Putting rechargeable batteries in a toy that will likely not need a replacement for a year or more definitely feels like a waste of money - as does knowing that 20+ rechargeable batteries have been thrown out with regular batteries and broken toys.

Unless I know I can get 8-10 uses out of them, it doesn’t seem ecologically or economically prudent to use rechargeables.

edit . Also - child != children. We have well over 100 AA and probably as many AAA batteries in various toys at any given time…

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#154

Post by TaylorAlexander »

sandworm101 wrote: post #138
rainbowzootsuit wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in video production for a time, my understanding of the intent/marketing of the procell line is that you always use a fresh one for each production. Therefore, they are lower spec than one that might sit in a device for a long time as they're going to be done with their intended life in a few hours, and they're cheaper than the retail cells with better longevity. I certainly never ran them through the q…

The places I worked certainly went thought them like water. Every time something like a lav pack or mic came off a performer it got a new procell. There were buckets of them at the end of the day. They never spent much time inside the devices but did come home with us for use in remotes and kids toys. I understood the procell line to mean that the batteries each got tested for voltage before shipping. 20/30 years ago…

This demystifies something that had puzzled me. I got a nice wireless lav setup and I find it very annoying that they use alkaline cells. I thought rechargeable lithium batteries would be nicer because you can always top them up, but in a more professional setting it may be easier to just use fresh batteries every time. Of course using alkaline cells really annoys me because of the waste. Maybe I should get some good rechargeable AA cells, but I much prefer a device which can just be plugged in to charge without having to remove the cells.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#155

Post by pengaru »

The number of comments here saying batteries used to not leak, as if this is some kind of new phenomenon, confuses the hell out of me.

Alkaline batteries have always been prone to leaking and ruining electronics when left in them too long for as long as I can remember (I'm in my 40s).

It's worse in my experience if subjected to extreme temperature swings.

Rechargeables tend to be more robustly made in this department.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#156

Post by sandworm101 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #154
sandworm101 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The places I worked certainly went thought them like water. Every time something like a lav pack or mic came off a performer it got a new procell. There were buckets of them at the end of the day. They never spent much time inside the devices but did come home with us for use in remotes and kids toys. I understood the procell line to mean that the batteries each got tested for voltage before shipping. 20/30 years ago…

This demystifies something that had puzzled me. I got a nice wireless lav setup and I find it very annoying that they use alkaline cells. I thought rechargeable lithium batteries would be nicer because you can always top them up, but in a more professional setting it may be easier to just use fresh batteries every time. Of course using alkaline cells really annoys me because of the waste. Maybe I should get some good…

At the pro level you need something that can be turned around in seconds. You dont want to hold up a rock concert or movie shoot because a battery has run flat. A constant flow of alkaline batteries is more reliable than organizing banks of gear-specific rechargeables. If mrs spears' pack died, a man in black would be running on stage with a new procell. Far easier to swap a battery than swap the entire pack integrated into her costume and sound systems.

The entertainment biz is special. They will bring thier own generators to run a rock concert because the power supply at every major stadium is too unreliable. A touring show would rather haul a generator truck (or three) than deal with the specifics of each stadium they visit and risk bad power. Better to spend the money and generate it yourself.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#158

Post by ARandomerDude »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #24

There's very little reason to continue using Alkalines in the majority of cases. Rechargeable batteries both last longer, and, perhaps even more importantly, do not leak.

Batteries are so cheap these days that I consider them essentially single use, like a paper plate. I buy the 60 pack of Rayovac AAs at Home Depot and always have fresh batteries -- and I don't have to worry about a leaking issue.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#159

Post by stavros »

mikepurvis wrote: post #86
dragontamer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Alkaline at 100% charge is 1.5V, at 50% charge it's 1.2V, at 0% charge it's .9V. NiMH at 100% charge is 1.35V, at 50% charge it's 1.35V, at 0% charge it's like 1.2V Totally different discharge curves. There's no simple circuit to convert between the two. ----- EDIT: For hard data, see: Energizer NiMH : https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/nh15-2300gl1220.pdf Energizer Alkaline: https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/e91gl0…

Oh yeah, I'm aware that for any other chemistry you need an actual coulomb-counter to get a proper gas gauge. My suggestion was more about the specific matter of suppressing an unwanted and inaccurate low battery light. Though maybe instead of trying to mod the circuit board, it would be easier to just disconnect the LED itself.

Or just to ignore it.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#160

Post by exhilaration »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #146
jandrese wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what killed me when I started swapping Alkalines for NiMH in the 00s. Every single charger sold in stores only charged in pairs, and because even then USB was creating a 5V world most things that needed batteries used 3 of them. Even the charger that Panasonic sold with the Eneloops requires matched pairs. The other issue being that NiMH seems to top out at AA size. Finding C or D sized rechargeables is basic…

There is a more expensive eneloop charger that does individual cells. I have been mixing cells for charging for years with no problems.

I got the Panasonic advanced charger (BQ-CC17) in 2016, it charges individual batteries. Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-K-KJ17M3A4BA-Individual-ene...

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