I’ve done some searching and could not find a comprehensive review of these batteries. I just purchased a pack of 4 because I could not get any kind of a decent price on eneloop or duraloop equivalents (locally more than $5 per cell was the best I could find).
I ran a 300 ma discharge on the 4 before charging them and all came out between 495 and 539 mah capacity. (That’s according to my MH c-9000 charger.) I’m currently charging them and will run another discharge to see how they work out. It took me a while (and almost a microscope) to see that they are rated at 700 mah.
So far - average capacity (495+539)/2 = 517. I did not record the individual capacities but will from here on in. That works out to (517/700= 73.9) of the full capacity. I have no idea if these cells are initially charged to a 75 capacity before being sold or somewhat higher. Also don’t know how long they’ve been on the shelf or when they were manufacturered.
I’m charging these cells at 400 ma and will leave them on the charger for 2 hours after they finish the charge and then leave them overnight to rest before doing another discharge. It’s my understanding that the charger does a “finishing” charge after completion and that takes about 2 hours.
I left these for approx. 6 hours after charging them and then ran a 300 ma discharge (to 1.0 volts) test. Results are:
695, 715, 725, and 710 mah. So with one exception they are above the spec of 700 mah capacity (I don’t know how they measure this but it is sure close to my results).
I will give them another charge and run a 500 ma discharge later today to see how they perform. After that I’ll likely put 2 aside for a month to see how they keep their charge.
Thanks for the reply. I could do a 1 amp discharge but from my point of view I doubt I’d ever use them in anything that would load them that heavy.
Of course while out and about today I found the aaa duracell ion core 4’s for sale for the same price as these - should have waited a week.
Anyway these are now sitting for a month or two (may check two at the end of 30 days and then the last two at 60 days) to see how much they have self discharged. If they hold a decent charge for a couple of months that will be ok for my purposes.
Flydiver - I will be using these mainly in remotes and the like - quite low draw but at least with these no danger of leakage. I have a couple of fairly low power flashlights that need these and I suspect that a 500 ma draw will be about the max that they see. I prefer aa lights (also lion but that’s another story) but do have a couple of decent single aaa lights that I like.
I charged all 4 cells 30 days ago and left them alone since then. This morning I discharged two of them at a 500 ma discharge rate on my Maha c9000 and received the following result:
626 and 627 mah. Average = 626.5 mah.
Previous results (discharge soon after full charge) for a 500 ma discharge of the four batteries gave an average of 719.25 mah.
Thus the one month self discharge resulted in a capacity 87.1% of the full capacity or a loss of almost 13%.
I will leave the remaining two for another 30 days and do a similar discharge to see how they hold up.
Note: The room where I store the batteries and do the tests has been cool (about 55 to 60 deg. F (12.8 to 15.6 C)). This may have an impact upon the results.
Good info, jcs. Thanks
As you well know a fair number of NiMH batteries are very good for a couple of weeks, but self discharge in time. I find EBL fine to use within a few weeks, but they discharge faster than some others, like eneloops.
Jerry
Picked these up a Home Depot. Don’t get too excited, your local store may not have them at that price. Even the store that had them displayed didn’t have them ring up right. They manually changed the price though when I showed them the picture. Maybe yours will too.
I am doing a discharge test on them now. I will post the results later.
EDIT:
I charged and discharged 4 of the 8 cells and got 1152 1552, 1482, 1485, 1525mAh
I just noticed a typo on the first one. It is 1552 not 1152. I will change it.
i discharged at 700ma. They all have about the rated 1500mAh capacity. Don’t put too much importance on the exact numbers I posted. They can vary from test to test.
I just finished a 500 ma discharge on the remaining two batteries. They have been sitting approx. 60 days since being charged. The results:
622 mah and 627 mah - average is 624.5 mah.
Looking above the 30 day tests gave a result of 626 mah. The original discharge test was 719.25 mah.
So:
30 day average - 87% of full.
60 day average - 86.8% of full.
Appreciating that this a very small sample size it still indicates that the batteries do not loose much capacity when sitting around beyond a month. This is all the testing I’ll be doing for now.
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