Was down in my local Maplin to get some desolder braid to remove, toss on the floor then jump up and down on the Uniquefire HS-802's driver. It really ought to be pulling more than 30mA from a charged 18650...
They had these LSD cells cheap, £4.99 (About US$7 at the current exchange rate) for 4 so I picked up a couple of packs of them to see how they are.
They certainly aren't rebadged Eneloops but claim the 2100mAh that most non-Eneloop LSDs do. Nor do they resemble the Vapextech (not so great) LSD cells I have. I don't own any other LSD brands to compare them with but at 60% of the price of Eneloops I'll be interested to see if they perform well. First pack of them charging now, then I'll run a couple of cycles on them and measure capacity again. They claim to be "ready to use" which for me means a voltage not far off 1.4V. Let's see... All 4 between 1.319 and 1.325V. Fair enough,they're ready to use but are going to need charging in short order.
They look, but aren't, fatter than an Eneloop
The positive button is smaller than the Eneloop and Vapextech one.
Maplin is notoriously expensive - -didn't help that their tills both crashed and the shop was busy...
I normally only go there when I need stuff right now - as I did some desolder braid. So I looked at the special offer stuff - at half price, the price is usually more reasonable.
Actually their own brand LSD D NiMH cells are not bad - 8000mAh for £4.50 each (US$6.35). Their capacity seems to be pretty honest.
The batteries got topped off and are discharging at 550mA just now. Probably another couple of hours till they are discharged. I'll be gentle with them till they are broken in
Even though your Maplin stores are expensive, I love to have one or something similar here. Our best place for electronics is Radio Shack which just doesn't do it for me. That's one thing I miss about living in Alaska is the big name electronics stores. I could spend hours just walking around and looking at stuff.
Know that feeling. We did have a Radio Shack for a while in the 80's, but it closed years ago - AFAIR 86 when the oil price collapsed and a lot of Americans went home. Maplin is really the UK equivalent of Radio Shack.
I have a trade account at the place I get networking gear for my other job. It is in Glasgow - 150 miles away but I always enjoy going in there to get stuff. "What is that?", "OK I'll take it" Gets expensive fast. "I like that network tester, how much?" "$9,000". "Not today thanks"
They deliver genuinely next day for almost no money - and are happy to send only the paperwork to the card address and the kit to the job site. Almost nobody does this and means you can charge what you like for the stuff. Personally, I hand over the invoices and charge components at cost - but get it back on my hourly rate.
Consumer electronics - well there are dozens of big name stores, the usual one I use is about 300m (metres, not miles) from my office. Best Buy has just opened a dozen stores in the UK, none of them in Scotland.
Our biggest addition recently was Home Depot and there are rumors of a Target coming in a year or 2. On the Kona side of the island are a few stores like Target, Sports Authority, Costco, K-mart but no big electronics stores yet. I don't get over there that ofter as it is almost a 3 hr. drive. Luckily there is always online purchasing but that also comes with the long wait. :(
I read up on those cells on the other side and it seemed that a guy had a problem with the charger causing a cell to leak.......but that can actually happen to anyone no matter what brand. Cool cant wait for the numbers.
Some sort of glitch I think. Discovered I can just paste the table in from Excel which makes life easier than messing around with formatting.
Cell
1
2
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4
5
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8
Pretty happy with those numbers so far - the real test is how low their self-discharge is. I have a very picky digital camera that is choosy about the voltages it'll work at and with my older Vapex branded LSDs it is complaining about low voltage within a week. Will try these cells out in it for a week or two and discharge one every so often to see how it gets on.
As long as they are actually LSD. Not about to get rid of my Eneloops any time soon. We'll see as time goes on. I've been remeasuring my older Vapextech LSDs which don't work for long with my very picky digital camera. I'll put up some numbers later, but they certainly didn't give the capacity that these Camelion ones do - they also sell some LSDs with 2300mAh claimed capacity. I really bought these because they were cheap rather than my needing any more NiMH cells so thus far I'm pretty pleased with my purchase.
Yes, it is impressive that the cells are giving good numbers but on the lsd side we have to wait and see how they do. Im also in the same predicament with the Turnigys, right now there in a Breakin Cycle and i snuck a peek at the mah when they were at rest and either these cells are the bomb - meaning awesome- or there just regular high capacity cells relabeled. Wel will have to see
These are the numbers for a bunch of Vapextech 2100mAh cells I bought 2-3 years ago. Their LSD performance isn't as good as the Eneloops. I'm hoping that the Camelion cells will do as well as the Eneloops. Somehow I doubt it, but the capacity boost is nice.
