Review-CHICNOD Rechargeable 1.5V AA Lithium ion Batteries 3300mWh

Batteries and Chargers Rechargeable Batteries
1

The Amazon Deals thread pointed out a CHICNOD Rechargeable 1.5V AA Lithium ion Batteries 3300mWh High Capacity with Type C Cable, 2 Hours Quick Charge AA - 4 Packs for $8, which is remarkably cheap for this type of battery. Deal is dead now, but at $18 (need Amazon prime for that price), it is still bargain basement for this type. Decided to try them out with a quick review.
At a claim of 3300mWh (~2200mAh), I strongly suspected some rather far fetched market padding. I wasn’t wrong.
No problem with shipping, well packed, minimal small box they came in.
Batteries are USB charged. No good way to determine the charge state out of the box as they are all either 1.5v or dead when the low voltage cuts out. I charged them up and they seemed to do that appropriately. I felt like the USP port was one of the best of this kind of battery I’ve used. They are often pretty ‘rough’.
I used a dedicated discharger, ZH-YU ZB106+ v1.3 and holder for this test. I’ve found it to have a high level of repeatability, unlike slider charger capacity testers.

I tested the lot of them at various discharge levels and they matched pretty well. Oddly the very low discharge at 0.2A was lower than 0.5A. They continued to function all the way up to 2.5A, the limit of the ZH-YU ZB106. Cut-off was 1.0v, the low limit of the device.

1270/0.5
1280/0.5A
1270/0.5A
1300/0.5A
Results at the higher amp draw extreme. Some of this type simply cannot do this due to heating of the conversion components.
954/2.5A
972/2.0A
740/2.5A

They held up well at 1.0A, and still did OK at 1.5A, but started to show the strain at 2.0A
2 things stand out to me with limited experience with this type of cell. (I own 3 other brands).

  1. They are lower capacity than any of the others I have experience with.
  2. They are…barely…over 1/2 of their claimed capacity.

They probably have the few advantages of this type of cell (1.5v support) and suffer markedly from the problem of the family, low capacity. It’s an engineering and fabrication challenge to get all the necessary ‘stuff’ in that little can.
They are ALL WAY TOO EXPENSIVE, unless you have a niche use crying out for them, or you get them on a great sale.
For $8, why not. For $18, nah.

2

I like the idea but a bit skeptical about the brand. Also skeptical of a lithium battery being sold so cheap.

3

Indeed! I agree. But…
Somebody had to be the guinea pig.
When Tenavolt were first being sold, the price was only a bit higher than this. Great batteries? No. But for some things pretty useful. At $10-12/4 they were a decent deal. I have a dozen, use them routinely and so far they are doing their job and holding up.
Now, its $35 for 4 of them . Obviously loss leaders in the beginning. Not worth it anymore.
But…the search, that’s what a portion of the BLF is after, that special deal.

4

Yeh, my “niche” for them is for simple stoopit rechargeable cells that won’t leak, and where 1.2V from NiMH shows as “low battery” almost right from the charger.

So if you don’t want an alkaleak crapping the bed and ruining the device itself, and primaries will be too expensive so you want rechargeables, and NiMH is generally a no-go because of the lower voltage, than these are great.

Even something like a wireless mouse where operation is usually go or blow (ie, asleep unless/until blasting the LED and transmitting a signal when being moved, then asleep again), you’ll typically get a bit better range at 1.5V than 1.2V. Some don’t handle 1.2V/2.4V very well, and need that full 1.5V/3.0V to work right.