Batteries and chargers (AA/AAA)

[Agent_zed]

One important factor that I haven't seen mentioned above is the mAH. I've seen a lot of the main big brands you'll find in the supermarket selling rechargeable AA's with mAH of 1300/1400, which is pretty poor. I am careful to check the ones I get are over 2000mAH and are typically 2100/2300mAH. This is literally the capacity of the battery. Bigger the number the longer it will run.

If you have different mAH batteries always charge same values together.

 

[John Brown]

On the subject of Lithium batteries did anyone see the news article this morning about the risk our recycling centres are facing from old equipment being thrown into the rubbish containing lithium batteries, there was one centre that got incinerated and another where a worker almost got injured. If you look into this a bit more there are so many events happening.


https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/mid-uk-recycling-fire-cause-may-have-been-a-lithium-battery/
https://www.itv.com/news/westcountr...ause-fire-to-breakout-in-bristol-waste-centre
I know these lithium batteries are a real hazzard when handled incorrectly but with so many in circulation I don't think the UK has the ability to recycle this volume and this is before we go mainstream down the EV route, basically with some modifications an EV could become a mobile incendary device.

Unlike ICE vehicles, which just have a big tank of petrol...

 

[Spectric]

I think you will find lithium burns more like magnesium and unlike petrol which can be extinguished with foam lithium needs total submersion because the combustion can be self sustaining. There was documentary where a car transporter caught fire and the fire brigade submerged the vehicle in a container full of water to ensure the fire was extinguished, lithium is real nasty stuff.

 

[thikone]

Panasonic (previously Sanyo) Eneloop AA and AAA batteries are great. Have like two hundreds of them, mostly in children's toys and such.

You can also buy empty shells for them of size C and D that are also happen in toys.

And Panasonic chargers, those that can do 1 or more batteries, charge each cell individually (aka Individual Control), which is the best way. You can find charges with 2, 4 or 8 batteries slots. My favorite is Smart & Quick BQ-CC55 charger.

You usually don't need Eneloop Pro, those are for high current applications and have bigger self discharge.

Panasonic Eneloop Lineup

 

[Geoff_S]

Panasonic (previously Sanyo) Eneloop AA and AAA batteries are great. Have like two hundreds of them, mostly in children's toys and such.

You can also buy empty shells for them of size C and D that are also happen in toys.

And Panasonic chargers, those that can do 1 or more batteries, charge each cell individually (aka Individual Control), which is the best way. You can find charges with 2, 4 or 8 batteries slots. My favorite is Smart & Quick BQ-CC55 charger.

You usually don't need Eneloop Pro, those are for high current applications and have bigger self discharge.

Panasonic Eneloop Lineup

Have you compared normal Eneloop with the Pro version?

Not a trick question as I am using the Pro for all sorts but did read recently that they’re not the best for low power things like clocks. Not that I’m actually changing the clock batteries that often.

But as I replace my Duracells with Eneloops, I’m wondering whether to get ordinary Eneloops for specific applications.

 

[farlsborough]

I knew loads of people on here would have put the work in, thank you everyone. I’m going to go for an intelligent charger because the simple “flashing green light, flashing red light” of my current cheapo charger drives me crazy. No indication as to battery health, need to pair etc. and the ability to recondition would be great.

 

[D_W]

I didn't even know there was a pro version. I have only the white types, but like mentioned above, as batteries rubbish out, they are being replaced only with those. I've never had a single one show a fault or fail to take a charge, and even the finicky chargers like the digital display ikea chargers love them.

Not sure what "lite" means (just looked it up - half capacity more or less).

not sure why they choose to use the term "pro" but the white ones are plenty good enough for us serious amateurs!

Separately, I didn't even know they made individual lithium cells. I saw a listing for about twice the cost of eneloops per battery, a battery with a PCB in it (of course, otherwise nothing would limit flow in or out), and a claim of something like 3500mah for AAs. I'd sure want to see those batteries last in actual use before splashing out the money.

too, one of the humorous things to see over time is to get the eneloops, which are "min 1900mah", outlast just about everything labeled with a higher number right away, and then with some age, blow them away.

 

[D_W]

I knew loads of people on here would have put the work in, thank you everyone. I’m going to go for an intelligent charger because the simple “flashing green light, flashing red light” of my current cheapo charger drives me crazy. No indication as to battery health, need to pair etc. and the ability to recondition would be great.

I'd be concerned also that the cheapo charger decides what it's going to feed to the battery in charge amount rather than sense where the battery is. Maybe there are compromises in methods that make this less crude than it seems, but I had a wall charger that came in a pack with mid cost batteries, and no matter what you did, it charged the batteries for the same amount of time. the mrs was complaining about the PS3 rayovac charger not holding enough batteries, but I ended up just buying a second one instead as it became an extreme hassle to deal with the wall charger making poorly matched batteries, which does nothing for longevity of the batteries and has you changing batteries all the time when one cell has little left and the rest of the batteries still have 2/3rds of a charge.

 

[John Brown]

I think you will find lithium burns more like magnesium and unlike petrol which can be extinguished with foam lithium needs total submersion because the combustion can be self sustaining. There was documentary where a car transporter caught fire and the fire brigade submerged the vehicle in a container full of water to ensure the fire was extinguished, lithium is real nasty stuff.

Yeah. Petrol is real nasty stuff too, which is why we're trying to move away from it.

 

[John Brown]

I'd be concerned also that the cheapo charger decides what it's going to feed to the battery in charge amount rather than sense where the battery is. Maybe there are compromises in methods that make this less crude than it seems, but I had a wall charger that came in a pack with mid cost batteries, and no matter what you did, it charged the batteries for the same amount of time. the mrs was complaining about the PS3 rayovac charger not holding enough batteries, but I ended up just buying a second one instead as it became an extreme hassle to deal with the wall charger making poorly matched batteries, which does nothing for longevity of the batteries and has you changing batteries all the time when one cell has little left and the rest of the batteries still have 2/3rds of a charge.

Nickel cadmium or metal hydride cells don't have a very useful voltage versus state of charge curve, so charge termination is usually based on voltage gradient or temperature gradient with respect to time. IIRC, some chargers used to discharge first.
Lithium cells are charged differently, and a lot of multi cell lithium batteries have special chips embedded to monitor state of charge.

 

[D_W]

is there anything lithium related that doesn't involve a PCB? I recall comments from a battery rebuilder in the US (long ago now) that they would go out of business since the PCB necessary to keep the lithium batteries from discharging too quickly was going to overcomplicate things for them. Presumably because they generally received dead battery packs at the time and rebuilt them with high quality NiMH cells.

That was my concern with AA cells, too, that in the era of LED lights, many things can last forever if it weren't for the cheap connectors and rubbish PCB work between the battery or power source and the item connected to it.

Maybe an errant assumption, but I've always assumed that anything LED (within reason) won't accept power to charge if the power isn't clean enough or quite right.

I don't remember enough about my cheap panasonic wall charger (may have been a different brand) other than reading something about it being "dumb". But between my memory and the bad sources of information online, who knows what I remember. buying the PS3 charger was a good move, but now that it's toast, I'll either be the last guy buying used versions in the future or will have to poll this board to see which charges actually monitor cells individually and charge as the cells need.

got burned at the outset of this like many cheapskates until getting the first pack of eneloops and realizing that they don't seem to self discharge, unlike most others, and when you put four charged batteries in something, they don't come back out of the item with one discharged and the others 3/4ths charged. buying better chargers was partially a matter of fighting cheap batteries, not knowing whether it was the charger or the batteries.

buying $2 per batteries instead of $3.50 eneloops is kind of like buying cheap driver tips before finally getting a good quality properly hardened one. the former may cost 1/3rd as much, but the latter will last 10x as long.

Unless my wife throws all of the above away. Then that determines how long they last.

 

[D_W]

Yeah. Petrol is real nasty stuff too, which is why we're trying to move away from it.

it sure siphons better, though.

 

[dannyr]

If you have a cordless landline phone at home - chances are you're already a daily user of chargers and rechargeable AAA batteries.

Just changed the batteries in my Panasonic 4 station cordless (last time round had used Panasonic brand and a v cheapo Chinese off-label - both seemed to perform similarly). I also changed out one of the mains socket step-down transformer/rectifier which no longer functioned - could only find an ancient 4.5V in my basement spares box - seems to replace the 4.8V Panasonic OK (2 AAA cells per handset) - all working fine again.

 

[thikone]

Have you compared normal Eneloop with the Pro version?

Not a trick question as I am using the Pro for all sorts but did read recently that they’re not the best for low power things like clocks. Not that I’m actually changing the clock batteries that often.

But as I replace my Duracells with Eneloops, I’m wondering whether to get ordinary Eneloops for specific applications.

Pro costs like double the price of regular ones on Amazon.de. They have bigger capacity (2500 vs 1900 regular), but also less charging cycles (500 vs 2100). Panasonic also claims that Pro can hold 85% of charge after one year. Whereas regular ("multiuse" they say) can hold 70% after 10 years.

There is also eneloop light version, half of the capacity but 3000 cycles. Not sure what are they good for. Just 950 mAh so you would charge them twice more often?

Eneloop Pro is probably better when you go somewhere and don't want to carry second set of them. But at home I can just replace them and recharge more often, no worries of the weight.

 

[Fatherclive]

I didn't know you could get Li-ion AA size batteries and it would be interesting to see if they are 1.5V as advertised or actually 1.2V.
Reading one review they were 1.5V but not as powerful as stated.

Li-ion shouldn't/can't be charged below freezing.

I had a multi charger years ago and tried charging multiple batteries. They were all the same rating but different makes; one exploded and blew the cover off.

Lithium ion batteries are nearly always 4.2volts per cell.

 

[Seascaper]

Christmas is coming, with lots of toys needing batteries… I know some engineering-minded types on here will have properly experimented to find the best option here!

When I was a child I remember we had a battery charger that held many different sizes of battery, and could charge lots at the same time. It was great, but I’ve never seen similar since! They almost all only have space for 4x AAs or AAAs…

So question 1 is does anyone have a recommendation for a good battery charger?

But - second and related question - has anyone made the jump to lithium ion batteries for their domestic use? They require a different charger and so I’d have to go all in - get rid of NiMH and buy a load of Li-ion - but the performance I get from my Li-ion tools is sorely tempting me!

Hello,
You can get the charger you are looking for from a good camera equipment store. My came mail order from Speed Graphic in Hampshire. It does both double & triple AA batteries and it has a switch to change between types of batteries. If you get a good charger and some good batteries you will never buy a throw away battery again. Rechargeable batteries come in various capacities.
Regards

 

[niemeyjt]

Not cheap, but these arrived in my Inbox today - and 1.5v

https://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product/pale-blue-aa-usb-c-4-pcs-aa-batteries-23093814
https://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product/pale-blue-aaa-usb-c-4-pcs-aaa-batteries-23093815

 

[Gerry]

Those 1.5v cells are lithium Ion which is always 4.2v regardless of the size. They contain a voltage reguator circuit to drop the cell voltage to 1.5v output. The problem is that their output contains a lot of electrical noise rendering them useless for a lot of elecrtronic devices such as cameras because of interference from the regulator.

Gerry

 

[Sideways]

Reading the last several posts has been v useful. Thanks all.
I have a variety of electrical test gear that runs on AA's.
A battery leak in a £400 meter is really bad news so I have been buying Energizer Lithium cells on the grounds that I've never, ever, seen one leak and a battery with a 20yr shelf life must have a good casing.
This thread got me reading up about the latest generation 5 eneloops, 70% charge retention after 10 years, etc for the standard cell. They sound excellent and I have a Maha Powerex charger already that will take care of them.
I'm going to try a few sets and hope their 1.2V is enough for my gear. They will break even quickly enough.

 

[D_W]

Reading the last several posts has been v useful. Thanks all.
I have a variety of electrical test gear that runs on AA's.
A battery leak in a £400 meter is really bad news so I have been buying Energizer Lithium cells on the grounds that I've never, ever, seen one leak and a battery with a 20yr shelf life must have a good casing.
This thread got me reading up about the latest generation 5 eneloops, 70% charge retention after 10 years, etc for the standard cell. They sound excellent and I have a Maha Powerex charger already that will take care of them.
I'm going to try a few sets and hope their 1.2V is enough for my gear. They will break even quickly enough.

I'm elbowing everyone out of the way to praise them the loudest because I must've had about 150 non eneloop batteries before finally getting them.

I just threw a japan made energizer battery today that wouldn't take a charge. No idea why, it hasn't seen that many cycles. I could be wrong about its origin, but it wasn't cheap, and I bought it to get the charger and batteries together on a deal at the local bulk club. Almost none of those are left.

So what happened with all of these is that my wife is not sparing of anything other than praise for hubby, and she would buy gobs of alkaline batteries and just chew through them. I introduced all of the rechargeables and she was so frustrated with them she was just throwing them away at the first sign of malfunction. I didn't pony up for the eneloops until it was last resort, and now I will not buy anything else. Perhaps out of 80-100 eneloops, i've not seen a failure yet in a single one of them.

I'm reminded of how inconsistent the remaining cheapo batteries are as I assign them to less critical tasks when eneloops have run out - like TV remotes, etc. My remote in the basement office is dead. I rarely watch TV, so I don't notice when it actually became dead as I haven't had the TV on in at least 6 months. I open the remote yesterday and there are two "tenergy" batteries in it that would've been tested as even and put in. One is dead, the other is near full charge. They are identical batteries. They say something like "tenergy premium" on them.

At some point, I will get a defective eneloop, but they have built such a cushion by being near equivalent to alkalines in terms of consistency and ability to hold charge when sitting idle that I won't really care. And, as you mention, i've never had one leak - so they have that up on alkalines.

What I don't get is why it's so hard for the chinese battery manufacturers to reverse engineer the eneloops and at least get reasonably close to them. it must be western buyers telling them that they're not interested for another X cents per battery because buyers buy on price now and not quality. And for the most part, that's true.