What's wrong with Amazon.com?
I received an email from a reader that the links on eneloop101.com to Amazon don't work anymore, and he was right! Almost all eneloops are gone from Amazon.com
I'm curious what happened.
I have my own theory though.. if anyone is interested.
A few months ago I noticed some limited Amazon eneloops on Amazon.co.jp (Japan). I don't know if they are photoshopped or if the regular eneloops really have black letters instead of blue. The listing shows that they are Amazon.co.jp limited editions...
So maybe Amazon.com wants to have THEIR marketshare in Eneloops as well! OR they want to only promote Amazon NiMH batteries.. who knows.. would personally think its the former reason.
Noticed eBay has eneloop lites for reasonable prices shipped from lithuania. Think they are legit? I like the idea of lower capacity that’s why I use rayovac aaa instead of eneloop mostly.
Does anyone know the expected lifespan of Eneloops when they’re only run through a few cycles per year? How are older cells holding up under these conditions?
Yeah, we’re still figuring that one out. I have several Eneloops from the year they came out (2006), and they’re all still good. Maybe lost 5–10 of their capacity. They have somewhere between 100-200 cycles on them.
Out of over 300 Eneloops, I’ve only had 1 cell go bad on me for no reason. It’s from 2009. Still works, but has very high internal resistance and only 1300mAh capcity (at a low discharge rate). I’ve had 2 others go bad the same way, but that is from too many cycles (several hundred cycles).
Anyway, in general, you should easily expect 10 years out of your cells if you only cycle them 1 or 2 dozen times per year. I expect the real answer will be closer to 20 years, but I’ll have to wait another 7 years to see.
Once the cells go bad, they’re no good for high-drain applications (like flashlights), but they’re still fine for low-drain stuff, like remote controls.