161–170 of 195 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern chargers are microprocessor controlled and are able to keep track of each battery individually.
Yes, but only the ones that does not require charging in pairs. Most people only use the bundled chargers and they all work with pairs.
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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to clarify your point there: Charging batteries as pairs is what kills the rechargeable batteries. There is no way for the charger to keep track of both batteries at the same time so it just charges until both should be done. If one of them is bad, the charger will kill the other one too. If they are differently charged, it will kill one of the batteries and next time it will kill the other battery. (Kill as in…
Also, NiMH batteries can reverse charge and ruin themselves. This happens a lot when batteries are in series and the load will continue to run the batteries until 0 voltage. The weakest battery will deplete first but then the other batteries will continue to pump current through until that weak battery reverses polarity and wrecks itself.
For a long while I kept them to prove the point to anyone who thought I'd must have lost my ability to distinguish plus from minus.
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…
Curious if you're having these leaks in Duracells you bought from a big box retail store, or shipped from Amazon.
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…
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…
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…
Most of my remotes are still using the batteries they shipped with. It's hard to make the case for replacing batteries when the originals last 15+ years (and counting).
Well, turned out the original batteries were still alive, but on a closer (painful to nails) inspection, it turned out that the silicon buttons/pad started leaching the oily goo onto the contacts on the PCB thus reducing the responsiveness.
Swabbing and washing restored these, but something tells me this problem will be back sooner than in another decade.
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…
Duracell (the Mallory company) was bought by Dart in 1978, then by KKR in 1988, Gillette in 1996, Procter & Gamble bought Gillette in 2005, and Duracell was spun off and bought by Berkshire Hathaway in 2016. (source: Wikipedia) The company has been under large-scale finance / conglomerate management for more than 4 decades by now. I don’t think there would have been any immediate change in battery quality circa 2016.…
There is an increasing number of smart home devices that tell people to avoid rechargeable batteries. This was understandable when smart home products were a small category, often run by small companies that couldn't possibly put in the effort to understand the discharge curve of every rechargeable battery out there. But given the size of the industry today, they should come together and create a standard for a rechargeable battery. Perhaps they can even partner with battery manufacturers and create a new form factor, so people can't just use alkaline batteries instead.
Professional uses like military, R&D, filming etc are often cited but in reality they are a very small percentage of batteries used, and don't need to change before consumer applications do.