Ode to the AA Battery
jeffgeerling.com
Ode to the AA Battery
1–10 of 181 posts
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#2> run at a nominal 1.2V instead of the 1.5V of alkaline batteries.
I've suddenly figured out why so many toys don't work with rechargeable batteries
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#3Can’t exactly relate to the post. I never had a device die on me like that. All my devices with Li-ion batteries are “daily drivers”.
I do tend to keep charge between 20-80% where possible, and fortunately haven’t seen significant battery degradation.
I’m on a 4 year old iPhone and even that easily gets me through the day still on 80% charge.
My only AA device is my HHKB keyboard and I wish it had a USB-C rechargeable battery instead.
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#4Speaking of which, I really hate those chargers that force you to use two batteries instead of one. I get that it is cheaper to design it that way, but come on.
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#5The Xbox 360 was the most gamer friendly console (play your open music during games?!?) but one feature i loved was the battery packs. Your controller died? Just swap a pack - two seconds. And the packs could be rechargeable or AA so you could have a bunch of rechargeable AA for a fair price and never get bogged down waiting for anything to charge.
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#6> run at a nominal 1.2V instead of the 1.5V of alkaline batteries. I've suddenly figured out why so many toys don't work with rechargeable batteries
You can now find 1.5V Li-on AA batteries with, and that's a game changer, built-in charger and a type-C port!
I have one in my wireless mouse. If it dies, I change it to a spare and charge it right from my laptop (and the battery that was empty becomes the spare)
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#7> run at a nominal 1.2V instead of the 1.5V of alkaline batteries. I've suddenly figured out why so many toys don't work with rechargeable batteries
I believe I have zero Alkaline batteries left in my house and I'm relatively surprised that pretty much everything works fine. If anything, I suspect the only problem is that some devices have an inaccurate account of how dead the batteries are. But I use Eneloops on everything, even things surely not designed at all to run on them. (And I reckon you could probably make more devices work if you really wanted to; adding an additional cell or two in series would surely give you a voltage that's in range, if you can figure out a good way to do it.)
Of course not all rechargable batteries are the same; there are a few different rechargable battery chemistries in the AA form factor. I like Eneloop Pros, though; they've been very reliable for me. I've been using them for years and I've never had to throw one out yet; supposedly they last over a thousand cycles with most of their capacity.
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#8The best thing about Eneloops do not seem to leak. I can just leave them in rarely used electronic devices without worrying. They might discharge, but so far this has never been a problem.
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#9> run at a nominal 1.2V instead of the 1.5V of alkaline batteries. I've suddenly figured out why so many toys don't work with rechargeable batteries
That's not the reason.
Alkaline batteries only have 1.5V for a short time. In practice, toys are designed to opeerate off of 1V to 1.5V, because Alkalines vary _wildly_ in voltage during use.
NiMH at 1.2V _STAYS_ at 1.2V, even when drawing 1Amp or more (under these conditions, Alkaline would have long dropped below 1V).
EDIT: This is also a problem because "nicer toys" will measure the voltage assuming an Alkaline is "full" at 1.5V and dies at 1.0V. However, NiMH starts at 1.35V, then "plateau" at 1.2V, and stays there for most of its life, before rapidly falling off to 1.0V or .8V like a cliff at the end of its life. So NiMH life "cannot be predicted" by any simple metric.
Re: Ode to the AA Battery
#10> run at a nominal 1.2V instead of the 1.5V of alkaline batteries. I've suddenly figured out why so many toys don't work with rechargeable batteries
If they don't work at 1.2V they weren't very good quality to begin with. AAs are dead at 1.0 or 0.9V.
There are a lot of low–quality toys.