Do eneloops need an initial break in?

[gchart]

BTW, ChibiM is our resident Eneloop expert. He has a great Eneloop thread here and he also runs Eneloop101.com. Below are a few excerpts from his website:

From an interview with Eneloops technicians

22. Do you have graph of the effect of a periodic refresh V break_in V control (regular recharge without refresh or break_in) of Eneloops?

No, they don’t. They don’t even recommend doing a Break-in, but this is all up to the users. It probably only helps reviving capacity with a very small amount.

Also this from his Charge page

When to use a break-in with Eneloops?
Only with an empty battery! When using rechargeable NiMH batteries people advice to do a Break-In right out of the package. I personally don`t think you need to do this with Eneloops. It`s a great feature for old rechargeable AA or AAA batteries that are almost useless or completely dead.

My advice would be to not use the Break-In mode (too often) with Eneloops, especially not with Eneloop Pro. Eneloops don`t really need it unless you want to have the extra 5+% capacity.

Ps. New eneloop batteries need a few cycles to get to max capacity… (This is also written in each battery product specifications.