I know what I'll pick up next time I'm at IKEA.
Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
71–80 of 195 posts
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#72I 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…
I agree, rotating collection of charged cells is the way to go but:
- need to establish a system of keeping track what's charged
- train family to participate
- train family to stop buying alkaline (mainly because in the alkaline recycling process you'll lose a lot of your eneloops)
- grow immunity against complaints from family
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree! My Game Boy Advanced power light is green for about an hour then red for hours and hours on my eneloops. Also my Tascam field recorder has the option for alkaline or NiMH batteries. I still have some kitchen scales that won’t work with NiMH though :( I’ve had my energiser batteries for almost 10 years and I’ve been rotating them through devices and the charger. Only recently have I begun to lose some c…
A quick googling reveals nothing, but I wonder if a simple hardware mod could address this— basically, identify the voltage divider that's doing the measurement across the battery and change out one of the resistors so that it "sees" 1.35V as 1.5V. Most GBA battery mod posts are about people upgrading units to have built-in lithium packs, USB-C charge ports, etc etc.
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.
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EDIT: For hard data, see:
Energizer NiMH : https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/nh15-2300gl1220.pdf
Energizer Alkaline: https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/e91gl0320.pdf
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#74Chiming in, I just recently was wondering how two seemingly equal by chemistry and size batteries just from different mfgrs could be so much incomparable by practical life-times.
On so many occasions Panasonic or Sony (Japan made) batteries which come included with devices (like remote controls etc) would last years (!) (in some odd case I had Sony AA battery functional after more than a decade), yet any recent replacements from Duracel or Energizer the ones bought from a pharmacy would get exhausted within a year of similar use.
There must be some difference there, just how to tell what is that?
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#75Let 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.
Anyone know who makes the Costco Kirkland brand AAs?
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#76Let 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…
Completely agree. Duracell batteries have been leaking consistently for me, I've stopped buying them and actively warn others. They have destroyed various remotes, torches and an expensive camera flash after only a few years.
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Rumor is the Ikea batteries are rebranded Eneloop I have good luck with them.
I have a lot of those white ones, and they work great for years now. They're a steal.
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#78Let 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 si…
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 make worse and worse until it finaly doesn't charge at all.)
I have mostly stopped using rechargeable AA and AAA batteries because of the bad quality of the last ones I bought. They took 3-5 charges before dying with a good charger that does all batteries separately.
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#79> This can be implemented basically with a fixed value of resistance, but because of the way resistance interacts with voltage, it’s actually very gentle on the battery. As the battery voltage falls, the current falls accordingly, so the delivered power falls even further. For modern appliances, this type of loading is not common.
Dumb question - is it at all possible to design a modern device which operates this way? (As battery voltage falls, device performance also falls? It's been a really really long time since my EE classes - are transistors just unable to operate this way?)
Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Anyone know who makes the Costco Kirkland brand AAs?
Producer likely to change depending on who does them cheapest at the time.