I am looking for rechargeable C size NiMH batteries and a charger. Just had a baby and a lot of the things for the bassinet and rocking seats use C batteries and I would like to get some rechargeable ones so we aren’t making so much waste. If anyone has any recommendations I’d appreciate it.
I recently went through asking for a C cell recommendation. Did not get a whole lot of usable information.
I have have had 8 Tenergy cells for several years with light use. One cell has failed. I have ordered 5 cells to replace one set of Tenergy. Which means I now have 3 spares for the 4 cell Tenergy use.
I could not find a whole lot of C NiMh tests. Most were for D and AA.
What I did. I went through several lists of cell tests. I made a list of the top performing performing D and AA cells. Ds ran between 7700 mAh and 9500 mAh. The AAs 2000 mAh to 2600 mAh.I then went through the list that had a D and an AA test. The intent was to see if the quality of a brand was consistent across battery sizes. Eliminating batteries without tested sets. I also checked if they were LSD. With your baby stuff use, that may not be important to you.
The best choice (in my opinion) I found is Soshine. 9300 mAh on D and 2600 mAh for AA. It shows a constancy in manufacturing.
Amazon Basic cells (1900) were the low end of my AA list and EBL (7700) on my D list. In the AAs without a D test, these are the best overall capacity. PowerX (2600), Imedion (2700), and Tecxus (2600). These would have been contenders if I had found D cell numbers or a C cell number. Try to find D tests that pair with the AA tests and you may have a good alternative.
A note of warning on cells. A number of manufacturers do not actually make C and D NiMh cells. They take a C or D shell and stick in an AA or 2. There are no C Eneloops.
Clearly this is not an exhaustive technical evaluation. I just got tired of trying to find all of the potentially useful cells. I just wanted to get batteries.
When I get the cells, and my charger can provide some information, I will add that to this thread.
Putting panasonic sub-c cells in a diy c holder?
https://eu.nkon.nl/rechargeable/other/panasonic-sub-c.html
Less capacity than regular c cells, but higher quality.
I just noticed today that PKCell has some pre-charged (so I assume low self discharge) C and D NiMH cells for sale. Spendy things though, ~$9/cell.
Soshine c cells no longer appear to be available.
I bought 8 C EBL 5000 mAh low self discharge cells from an ebay vendor. From the time to delivery I believe they are in the US. They present themselves as EBL.
Tested 2 cells 3 times on an Lii 500 charger. Then 2 more for a single test. They are coming up as 3500 mAh cells.
I am awaiting a response from the vendor. .
Tenergy seems to get very good marks and they have three D/C lines: the premiums, the Centuras and the basic (blue wrapped versions.) Stick with the premiums, or the Centuras, which are quasi-low self discharge offerings, but they don’t have quite the capacity of the premiums.
Chris
Tenergy is the cells I have had failures with. I looked into them again. Amazon reviews show about 30% failures. This is harder than I anticipated. I have not found much in the way of good testing on C cells.
Which Tenergy? I’ve had personal poor results from the blue ones in both AA and D.
I’ve been trying the Centura C for about a year+. Certainly not Eneloops but they’ve been doing OK. Losing capacity faster than I’d like but not nose diving like the blues.
FWIW I have some Tenergy Platinum 5000 Sub-C out of a RC power pack that got a couple hundred cycles over 3 years in a dive light before one cell died. The remaining cells tested out @ ~ 3600-3800 after that use and with a couple magnets on top for spacer/adapters have been used in the same light as the Tenergy Centura, and done just as well. Eneloops in a C-adapter do not do nearly as well. The light is pretty inefficient but well suited to my purpose so I keep using it. It’s easy to take down and recharge.
If you believe the math from discharge tests of that same pack when new the individual cells were ~4800. I don’t think they stayed that way long but I did not do regular testing.
I also have the Tenergy centura cells. Two of them have failed. They were not used very much. I have a set of 8. The device they are in uses 4 so I have a rotation available. I don’t want to mix new and old cells, so I started my quest for C cells.
I have also tried Eneloops in C-adapters and was not happy. It is also a pain to recharge 12 cells instead of 4.
One of the new EBL cells showed almost 4000 mAh on the first test. It was one of the cells I tested three times. Figured they would improve after a few cycles. Neither of them ever got above 3500 on the subsequent test runs. I ran a second pair of the EBLs through one test cycle. Both < 3500.
I don’t know if these are fakes or not. The ebay site seems to imply they are actually associated with EBL in some fashion.
But these cells are clearly a fraud. If it says 5000 on the cell; it needs to be 5000. And they are advertised widely. And always at 5000 mAh.
It is like buying a quart of milk and find out when you get it home, there is only a pint in the container when you put milk in your cereal.
A few months ago I bought a pair of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-everActive-C-Size-Rechargeable-batteries-Silver-Line-1-2V-min-3000mAh-Ni-MH/112771103088
Not bad low self discharge.
Idk about you, but in my alphabet the letters ‘C’ and ‘D’ are in two different places 
Of course, but the tests can provide an idea of the sort of actual performance versus rating figures the given brand cells may provide.
Cheers :-)
IMR Batteries has the Soshine C and D nimh on sale/clearance right now.
The batteries are cheap but shipping is not.
I bought some of each.
I’ve tested a few of the Cs on my Opus BT-C3100 and am getting ~4.6 AHr. This is with 700mA discharge rate.
This falls in line with “Torch the Battery Boy’s” testing of the D size: ~80-85% of rated. I’m sure they would be a little higher at 200mA discharge.
So decent. If they are reasonably low self discharge rate, I’ll be happy.
FB
FBsLights - I see what you mean about shipping. Almost more expensive than the batteries. Thanks for the heads up. I ordered 12 cells. The reason they are so cheap I suspect is they are no longer being sold in the US. Maybe out of that business altogether. They still seem to have a whole bunch of different batteries on the market.
Barkuti - That is what I did before. Went for C’s that were in a product line where AA and D had good results. Very few tests of C cells. Apparently there is not a lot of love for C cells. It was the Soshine I had chosen.
They are out of D cells.
Picked up 8xC on the sale. Got between 4500 > 4900mAh on one capacity test cycle using a mix of Opus, Lii-500, and Zanflare C4. Seem to improve a tad on a 2nd cycle, but not a huge amount.
All came charged from ~1-1.2v. No duds. Longevity untested.
FWIW my Tenergy Centura C (4000) are down to ~ 3400-3900 after 2 years of fairly constant use.
Has anyone tried dismantling RC NiMH battery packs that have C size cells?
I bet they’re pretty robust discharge wise.