Panasonic builds record-breaking battery

I've switched over to AA rechargables entirely.

2 amp types last 200 to 500 precent lomger than non-rechargable alkalines.

That covers my camera (4 AA) 2 sets of powered speakers (4 AA each) an iHome for my iPod (Merry Christmas!) (4 AA) and a pair of AAA each for my hand held VHF marine radios (3 of them).

In addition, I purchased a 10 cell battery charger pack (iSun) that plugs into the solar cells on the boat. AA and AAA cells recharge now without draining the house battery or using an inverter to drive an AC adapter.

So while a 20% increase in life of an AA battery may be fun for Panasonic, I don't think I'll be buying any of them...

Richard

Are you aware of the new Eneloop NIMH that Sanyo recently brought out? They apparently have solved the leakage issue..they dont go dead sitting in the drawer. Ive been changing over to these from basic NiMN bats, as Ive charged the old style, and a month later tried to use the digital camera, only to find em deader then a popcorn fart.

These go a long time without bleeding down.

Gunner

Best use for Liberals: "Autonomous Biological Mine Clearing Device, Single Use"

Interesting, Sanyo have solved the 'must work out the draw issue'. I still dont see them replacing the backup set of alkalines in the grab-bag for the handheld GPS. (the Handheld VHF has its own spare Li-ion pack).

I dont know if its cost effective to go rechargablethough as we seem to get through abut 30 AA alkalines a year (a UK chain 'Halfords' do a 30 pack) and they seem to last at least 80% of a Duracell's life at 2/3 the cheapest online price and less than 1/2 of the average retail price for Duracell. Its tough to beat most of the performance for a small fraction of the price . . .

Mm, yes - its getting to be a major problem in this household, SWMBO has a digital camera, as do I - nimh seem to have a relatively short useful life, exacerbated by my wife leaving them in the charger cooking until her camera ones go flat....and, as you have observed, they seem to self discharge pretty fast, even tho thats not supposed to happen with nimh, nicads, yes.......got to the stage theres a pack of alkaline AA's in the drawer, and in the car , for when the "you are responsible for this" (somehow) cries rend the air.......and as for her resetting the date/time thingy on her camera, thats my responsibility too...

I got an OLYMPUS FE270 for xmas, it takes a nice picture, but the manual is bloody hopeless - I am SURE the one I played with in the shop had variable shutter speed, and it did the aperture thing itself

- cant find it in the book, or the CD.....made sure it had a decent macro setting for project pictures. That werks ok, thankfully.

Andrew VK3BFA.

Its very cost effective to go rechargaable for me, as I use a digital camera a LOT. Also handheld comms and flashlights and....

A charger and a basic load of batteries, particularly off Ebay is very inexpensive.

Gunner

Great, if it's from Panasonic a.k.a. MatsuSHITa, about 33% will have failed before you even open the package and another 33% will fail within a week. The remaining 33% will work properly, but you'll be so disgusted with the lack of QC that you'll never use a MatsuSHITa product again.

What do you mean by "last 200 to 500 percent longer"? Rechargeable alkalines have about half the amp-hour capacity of regular alkalines. Do you mean their entire service life is 2 to 5 times longer? If so, you should be getting much more life out of them than that.

I use them for a few things, but the low amp-hour capacity is a problem for some applications.

-- Ed Huntress

I have alkaline batteries in the weather station display, the indoor/humidity sensor, and all the remote controls. These are low draw applications where swapping in charged NiMH would be a PITA.

My digicams, GPS, Maglights, FM transmitter (for mp3 player) and such use NiMH and I'm very pleased with the performance.

A flashlight kept in the car for emergencies should have alkaline batteries along with a transistor radio for emergency listening during a power outage.

Wes

I looked at the specs and at the manual at:

It doesn't look like you have a P, M, S, or A mode.

Wes

I hadn't heard of them before, but will keep an eye out now.

Depending on ow dear they are, it might be just the solution to the AA batery long term storage problem.

Thanks Guns,

Richard

Practice will improve snipping skills, Ed. :)

My rechargables are all rated at 2200 mah or better.

NON-Rechargables alkalines are rated 400 to 800 mah.

???

Richard

There is Rayovac Hybrid too. See:

I've been playing around with a set of four AA size now for several months. They seem to work okay. They had a decent life span right out of the bubble pack similar to the average alkaline.

The local store (Meijer) where I bought them dropped all Rayovac batteries just recently. Don't know what is up with that, but I think it was because they now offer their own house brand. I noticed right off that the house brand has no mention of any kind of warranty on the package. I won't buy any batteries that won't replace stuff that is ruined/damaged by them leaking...

You'd better do some more research, Richard. A new-technology RAM (rechargable alkaline magnesium), the best of the lot, may be rated at 2.2 Ah the first few times, and if your drain rate is 30 mA. But at those parameters a non-rechargeable will deliver a lot more: 3.0 Ah or so.

If you draw your RAMs down all the way, capacity falls off fast after a dozen re-chargings. And a drain rate of 300 mA on a Pure Energy brand AA cell (latest technology rechargeable) will give you only around 1.2 Ah capacity:

As far as I know, no rechargeable alkaline has reached the capacity of primary (non-rechargeable) alkalines, even when they're brand-new. Unless you use them in a capacity-limited application, where you're never drawing them down to less than 75% of capacity, their capacity will start to drop significantly after a dozen or so recharges. To get performance and long life out of them you have to really limit the percentage of their capacity that you use.

From your figures it looks as if someone is comparing the perfect-case, first-use, very-low-discharge-rate capacity of a Pure Energy rechargeable with a Chinese primary alkaline operating at ten times the drain rate. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

That should be "rechargeable alkaline manganese."

-- Ed Huntress

I've had good service from Energizer (2500 mAh) and Duracell (1800mAh) AA NiMH and Dorcy AAA batteries for all my applications other than flashlights which get cheap carbon batteries. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

I have been changing over to those too. They're ready to go when I need a battery change.

watch the quality drop on these batteries. If they're not stamped "HR" on the bottom, they're not the high quality Sanyo cells from Japan they've usually been selling. They'll be changed to some sort of no name garbage, and the process has already started.