It’s the first time that I see something like this:
USBCELL 1.2V 1450mAh NH-AA
What do you think about? Are they safe or just piece of crap?
Not really need other AA battery, but… 
What is the point of this $8.00 cell?
A USB charger and quality cells with twice the capacity would be cheaper and more useful.
If it’s indeed Li-Ion as they claim, with unknown cell and unknown charging circuit inside it could easily be a USB-Bomb.
1.2v lithium cell? I think it's NiMH. The charger pictured doesn't look like a Li-Ion charger.
No way in hell it can be lithium ion with the listed voltage out matching a NiMH battery, the capacity being close to that claimed and the size being AA with at least 1/3 of the battery volume being taken by the USB connector, cap and presumably charge controlling circuitry. Also note the number on the battery itself in the photo. “NH-AA 1.2V” tells me it is a Nickel metal hydride battery in AA size. Another case of a dealer, or his technical writer for the web site, not knowing what he is selling. IMO way too expensive too.
Remember that physics controls battery voltages depending on the cathode, anode and electrolyte chosen with cathode and anode materials being the major determinants of voltage out and construction methods such as surface area internally and electrolyte determined chemical activity level having a major effect on current capability. 3 volt Lithium Ion rechargeable batteries use added electronics to decrease the voltage out and boost recharge voltage to the needed level.
yet another solution in search of a problem.
and there appears to be no shortage of suckers to buy it!
i remember seeing these 10 years ago.
Yes I know that this is not the best deal. I’ve thinked at it like an emergency, if you don’t have any charger at the moment, etc etc
:~
I have one of those, but red color theme, discharged in Maha C9000 only yielded +–8XXmA, hence over rated, NON-LSD & high parasitic drain due to circuitry (I think), went down to 0V in my drawer, I dump it after the positive cap contact went bad.
In emergency it would not help much cause it already went down to Zero Volt :weary:
Here’s what you want for emergencies.
http://www.amazon.com/Energizer-L91BP-8-Ultimate-Lithium-Battery/dp/B0000DC4EL/
For longer term emergencies I have USB solar panels / chargers / power packs and lots of Eneloop and Eneloop Pro cells, and of course a stockpile of lithium-ions. But in the vehicles it’s mostly long shelf life, disposable batteries.
If you really want a cool emergency gadget that’s actually useful, get one of these instead and pair it with a cheap USB AA/AAA charger:
http://www.amazon.com/Levin-trade-Rain-resistant-Shockproof-Portable/dp/B00JEGLLI6/
I carry this WakaWaka which even has a built in lantern. It’s come down quite a bit in price since I bought mine:
Not to mention that in an actual emergency, it’s probable that you won’t have anything that’ll power a USB device, whereas Common, Off-The-Shelf alkaline batteries are far more likely to be available.
Dittos on the comments re: miserably low capacity (even as advertised) and excess complexity… Not to mention using up a bunch of USB ports to charge a set!
If they made one with actual Li-Ion (not primary Lithium as is implied by their ad copy), with 14500s as their target, it would be marginally interesting if they could get a reasonable capacity… But they’d have to keep the Cost awfully low (far less than what they’ve advertised here) to make what little “cute-factor” Benefit worth the trouble.
Dim
It could still have a lithium cell in it and a buck converter…
Then why the code on it “NH-AA 1.2V”? I am far more inclined to believe a dumb seller than that dumb a manufacturer. Would not the driver also decrease efficiency considerably if on the output? Better to have a voltage converter for charging and use the battery for direct output from a useable capacity standpoint. At this point all speculation. Maybe someone will buy one or two and do a disassembly of one for analysis.
I agree that it’s more likely to be a NiMH cell inside, but I wouldn’t say Li-Ion is impossible. It’s a no-name Chinese manufacturer we are talking about. There could be no connection between whats on the label and what’s inside. They don’t aim for the best performance, but rather for the cheapest cost. Who knows, maybe they simply altered the production line from manufacturing fake 14500 with tiny cell inside to USB charged AA with same tiny cell inside.
We’ll never know for sure until someone dissects one, and even then we can’t be sure that other batteries would look same inside
I bought a pair of this type of cell just to see how BAD they were in late 2011. You can see the results in the Battery Database thread: The BLF Battery Data Base
tl;dr - one-third of an already embarrassingly small claimed capacity.
i have bought several packages of the black and red version of this battery. I’ve put the battery in a sk68 and gifted it to people who probably don’t have a charger.
when charged in my soshine AA quick charger and then discharged in my opus V2.0 i’ve had results as low as 250 mah, but when charged from an USB-port i’ve had better results, up to 800 mah.
i haven’t tried how much they self-discharge.
so no, they’re not that good, but they can be useful for people who don’t have better gear and the highest performance needs.
eneloop is the gold standard in NiMH, unless it exceeds that its of no use
You know they sell 1/3 and 1/2 NiMH batteries right
Totally doable with a small cell, a pcb with this kind of chip on it, no external components needed, except maybe a resistor and/or a thermistor
Oh…DIY…neato!