Are Rechargeable AA Batteries Crap? (Lithium)

Sanyo HR-3U (i believe they are discontinued) and Tenergy Centura are what I have.

I have no opinion on Opus.
I’ve put probably somewhere close to 250 cycles on the Sanyo batts over the last 1.5-2yrs, and they are already starting to lose capacity, albeit slowly. The Tenergy batts I’ve had since middle of last year and are still working well after est 50-60 cycles.

That’s all the experience I can offer, as far as specifics go. It comes down to whether you need capacity or cycles, I guess.

Remember to look at the output power for the charger if yours isn’t cutting it. Higher current output means faster charging. I bought a 12 batt unit thinking I could charge for a few hours and swap for another dozen, but ended up finding that it takes 12hrs on that charger, and even an overnight charge wasn’t enough. Get something that pumps that freaking juice.

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That’s good to know.

This is the Opus’s charging power according the Amazon page:

The charging current can be selected to be 200mA, 300mA, 500mA, 700mA or 1000mA (1500mA and 2000mA can only be applied when only slot 1 or 4 is selected). Default discharging current is 500mA

I’m assuming the charging current doesn’t need to match the battery’s current… right?

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indeed

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Ok great, so to condense a solution to the original problem:

  1. I was stupidly assuming that all lithium batteries were rechargeable. They are not, and in fact non-rechargeable lithium batteries appeared to lose discharge power very quickly to the point that they are a poor choice for peripherals like wireless mice/keyboards/controllers. They are potentially a good choice for flashlights, IR remotes, or other lower power devices that can tolerate larger discrepancies in power discharge.

  2. Eneloop is a reliable brand for rechargeable batteries. The standard model (2000mAh) is the best value by a considerable margin, but the “Pro” line will last longer between charges.

  3. Ikea Ladda’s are essentially off-brand Eneloop’s at a lower price if you have access to them.

  4. Quality chargers are important. Chargers with more output power will charge your batteries faster, but potentially at the cost of lower capacity retention. In general, higher quality will probably give you a better overall result.

  5. Any decent charger will probably not burn your house down.

Thank you, @Novasty @FaunCB @khaudio @Zibob for your quick and helpful responses.

If anyone has anything to add, I will happily amend this solution.


Did we lose the ability to mark posts as solutions? I am unable to mark any of these posts as a solution…

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not due to charging speed; rechargeable NiMH just lose capacity over time. that is the reason they have a finite # of cycles.

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My diagnosis was based on @Novasty’s comment here:

Presumably, the tradeoff of a cheap, quick-charging charger is battery lifespan, where a higher quality charger can charge quickly without affecting lifespan.

I meant to indicate this here:

Oh wow 15 mins is pretty extreme. I can believe that being a stipulation.

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Heat, batteries off a 15-min charger are friggin burning hot.

What I currently use now is either one of those cheap Energizer universal chargers where you basically need 6+ hr charge them or the Eneloop chargers which are practically no different.

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I’ve been using regular eneloops for years and can recommend them without issue as well.

Also thank god nothing happened when you tried charging non rechargeable batteries. They usually explode, at least alkaline ones.

500 recharge cycles, look in the other corner idiot.

I have noticed this as well. Aremis was able to mark one of his threads as solved a few days ago. And a couple of days after he marked his thread as solved, I made a thread and I was unable to mark mine as solved. This was in the 1st of March.

BTW you should totally go thru all the threads and recap them as you did this one. It’s very convenient.

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Yup novasty is right here. 2100 cycles advertised on white, 500 on black.

That would be the mAh rating not the cycles.

Recharge cycles was what he was talking about in the first place.

The mAh for each is 2000 white and 2500 and change for the black.

So in this case you have the wrong end of the conversation, no need for name calling you are the one in the wrong here.

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@Eden did we lose the solution checkbox when the forum was being reformatted the other day?

I have never had it and have been given out to for not using it. I always assumed it was a higher power level that granted its use.

Depends on the sub-forum/category. I don’t think this one has it.

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Even so the batteries last an absurdly long time.

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The biggest difference for the higher capacity rechargeables is the internal resistance. Something like an eneloop is going to be lower capacity but will have a lower internal resistance. Because of this difference, higher capacity batteries can actually end up needing more charging cycles simply because of their higher self discharge. I have tried a few different brands in my electronics and the higher capacity batteries are not as good IMO. Their voltage falls off sooner, while the eneloops maintain a more stable voltage through their discharge. The other batteries I’ve been using are a mix of duracells, energizers, and nuons. They are all decent though.

I understand why it doesn’t make sense in some categories, but seems like anything under helpdesk should allow it.

‘helpdesk’ is a tag used for sorting, the solution button seems to be an additional functionality of the category.

I understand.

If it is possible to correlate the solution functionality with the helpdesk tag, I think it would make sense to do so. If not, I think it should be allowed under the hardware categories (other than build log maybe).

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