Has anyone heard of (or tried), Sanpima brand Lithium Ion AA batteries? See Server Busy .
They read okay in the advert on Amazon- but I guess that’s not surprising! I’ve got some coming to test, but was interested if anyone else has tried them? There’s next to no hits on Google.
They ‘might’ be OK. I got some branded SINCEHOLY that came in the same charger box with the similar promotion. I’ve seen a number of very similar options with different ‘brand names’ and competitive pricing: Artman, Zepath, Mupoer, Batzone. No telling if they are all exactly the same, but I suspect so.
The batch I got was supposedly 3600mWh/2400mAh and tested out to ~ 1900-2000mAh @1.0A draw.
At 2.0A they were around 1700mAh, and 1500-1600mAh @2.5A. That’s actually decent for this kind of cell from my limited experience.
My charger works OK but some people have had trouble with the contact reliability.
I also have Tenavolt AA Li, which up to this point were the best of this kind I had tried. The Sinceholy edged them out slightly. Only had them a few months so don’t know how they will hold up.
I can use the charger for the Tenavolt and another USB charging type (Imren) and it seems to work properly. I can put the SINCEHOLY in the Tenavolt charger for a proper charge.
If you get a really good deal, try them out. I wouldn’t pay a premium price for them.
Hmm-checked your website. Out of stock and nothing similar available it would seem.
Amazon adverts for batteries and lights are taken from the source. There is no checking or vetting at all. They can range from not too bad, to almost completely bogus. Most of the time they are seriously overblown.
The customer reviews for batteries is almost completely inaccurate and worthless. Very few people have proper equipment to test, and they seldom have a clue what they should be checking or how.
The reviews are often mixed up for different products and/or cell sizes.
Best to look for more accurate sources of confirmation,as you did, or do your own testing. That’s where my data comes from-checking an unknown out for myself.
Thanks for the info.
They’re free - I’m part of the Amazon Vine program. I’ve been wanting to try some lithium 1.5V rechargeables for ages, but kept getting put off by the reviews I’ve seen on other brands. Problems like the capacity being poor, failures early on etc. So this worked out well.
As part of the Vine program I definitely don’t write positive reviews if things are rubbish. I’ve written a few scathing reviews. But it’s a fine line to tread, as they will not publish reviews if you (for example) outright tell people not to buy something. I’ve had a few reviews not published “for breaching community standards” but they never tell you exactly what part of the review was the problem. It can be frustrating after spending many hours testing something, writing the review, doing photos etc.
I’ve got a Maha Powerex MH-C9000 charger - while it can’t be used to charge them, it does have a discharge function that will measure the mAh. So I’ll do that, but know the higher voltage (compared to NiMh) also needs to be considered. I’ve got some new Eneloop Pro AA batteries too - they should be a good cell for comparisons.
My wife has some heated gloves. Batteries (claimed 2200mAh) were pathetic at the start of the season. Did a BUNCH of frustrating searching, finding that the price, claimed capacity, and customer reviews were all over the map…typical.
Bought some 3500mAh ones. Had to solder up a special adapter to test them. I’ve got some dedicated equipment to test batteries that is considerably more reliable and better than charger/discharge units. I got frustrated with ‘maybe sorta/mostly good enough…’ function of them after a few years.
Came out at ~ 2400mAh@1.0A. I had a whole spreadsheet with charges, different current discharges, and timed in glove use tests, plus pictures of the equipment I used.
Sent it to the seller directly before I wrote a review. They said: “sorry for your disappointment. If you don’t like them, send them back.” They didn’t seem to care. So, I wrote a 2** review and sent in everything. Surprisingly Amazon published it.
The trouble with stuff like this is as I said, the info is bogus, and the customer reports are generally useless.
(Note-MOST of the ‘Vine’ reviews are ishy-saccarine-sweet useless, pandering to the product. Lots of consumer pimping going on there. 
)
I kept the batteries. At 2400mAh they are still ~800-1000mAh better than the originals, and I don’t trust ANY of the other products to be better. They all appear to be coming from the same place. Sorry situation. Same with camera batteries, replaceable cell phone batteries, etc.
I just treat those cells (any cells, really) as disposable, even if rechargeable.
If they work for any acceptable length of time, they’re “good”, and I’ll use them until not.
Even if the cells go teats up, the charger board on them is salvageable for other uses.
Constant 1.5V from a big honkin’ 18650 or 21700? Why not?
Anyway, I might be in the minority here, but I don’t get too worked up about capacity in those cells. If they work at least a few months in a remote, etc., then I’m happy. I can’t get all arsed to complain if they should last 8mos but only last 4mos, etc. Still beats having alkaleaks crap the bed and ruin the remote.
So things got off to a bad start. I contacted the seller via Amazon and straight away they said they’d send out another set. The problem only affects one battery. I didn’t say I was a Vine reviewer either. So this seller at least stands behind their product.
My latest review (for a socket set) just got approved. Two stars and I went into detail about the faults, how what was sent out isn’t the same as the kit that is pictured in the listing and even detailed false advertising. Like claiming the ratchet mechanism has a 72 teeth gear when it only clicks 24 times for a 360 degree rotation of a socket.
One of my early reviews was for an electrical appliance and I mentioned it didn’t have Australian electrical approval and how a dodgy travel converter was supplied due to the overseas plugpack supplied with it. Serious stuff that people should know. It was knocked back for not meeting community guidelines.
For me, ‘best buy’ status is a goal. I think BLF is semi-founded on that premise. Not everyone defines best buy the same but it’s a bit more simple for batteries.
If I pay…say, $1/cell for 4 different brand 1.5v AAA, and they test out in turn to have 200, 300, 400, and 500mAh respectively, then I’d much rather have the higher cap cells. Less needing to charge them, and will probably last longer likely having superior components.
FWIW that example is not entirely fanciful and is somewhat close to some personal testing I’ve done with cells in that category.
Wellp, things like my teevee remotes, weather-station remotes, etc., last long enough that I wouldn’t notice or mind a 2:1 difference in capacities, because either one is measured in months of use.
If it’s something like, dunno, a shaver or electric toothbrush, where there’s a difference between 3 days between recharges or 1 week between recharges, yeah, I might mind, because of the recharging-is-an-annoyance factor.
So whatever’s cheap-but-works is fine by me.
So that idea was good, but the lithium 1.5V batteries when inserted in the charger’s slot wouldn’t activate / wake up the slot. So a work around was putting in a NiMh to wake the slot and then quickly changing in the lithium as a replacement. It worked. They came out around 1800mAh (running a 500mA load) and the voltage had sagged to around 1.0V before I stopped the test. Prior to that reading,the regulation of the voltage to around 1.4V was a pleasant change.
It works out to just over 2500mWh (calculated using the voltage average of around 1.40V)- the claim is 3000mWh. So that result isn’t too bad really. The instructions also claim the battery capacity improves after around 3 cycles.
I did 5+ cycles and did not find any improvement in my batch.
If they are coming from the same source then your results seem consistent with mine.
The charger works in all slots OK?
Charger/cable peculiarity I noticed.
It comes with USB-C charging cable but I didn’t use it at first since I have others available at my charging station. I grabbed one the other day to charge up 4 cells and it would not start. That cable works fine for other charging. Dug the stock cable out of the box and it worked, and worked better than some other C-cables. They are all short so I don’t think resistance is a major factor.
I have another USB-C charging fan and it charges WAY better with it’s proprietary cable than many other cables.
Seems there can be some cable weirdness in USB-C that I don’t understand.
Yes, I swapped the batteries around and the one battery I was having issues with had the problem follow it into other slots.
I’ve got so many charging cables floating around it’s ridiculous. I’m starting to not use the cheap/ nasty ones that come with rechargeable lights and other similar devices. I have got some decent cables that range from 100W upwards that I use.
Good USB C cables have E marker chips in them that talk to the charger and set up the max power the cable is rated for. A cable that doesn’t have an E marker chip will only be able to charge at low power- the charger should limit it’s output power.
I’ll try the batteries on a higher load today.
The Eneloop Pros ended up testing at over 2400mAh at 500mA discharge. The voltage was sitting at around 1.1V level most of the time- I was expecting it to droop more. So if you’re looking at mWh they’re ahead by only around 140mWh. I left them until the charger cut off the cycle, whereas I pulled the lithiums out when I noticed the voltage has dropped to around 1V. I didn’t see what voltage it cut the Eneloops off at. It was more even than I expected.
Have you read this review? Maha Powerex MH-C9000 review
In these kind of batteries the ‘charger’ is just USB voltage in parallel directly into the battery. All charge/discharge functions are handled by the BMS control inside the battery. You should just be able to leave it in the Maha on discharge until it cuts out.
A quote from the review above:
[The discharge was supposed to terminate at 0.9 volt, but terminates somewhere between 1.0 and 1.1 volt].
I use this to do my battery discharge testing: ZH-YU ZB106+ v1.3
# 4 Wire Battery Resistance Capacity Test Holder
I’ve had to make some specialized holders to do thinks like camera batteries and those heated glove batteries.
Works considerably better than the charger/dischargers.
There are a lot of different capacity testers of this type, some with more power, some simpler with built-in battery holders, etc.
I did another test last night using a 1000mA load. I was checking every 30 minutes to compare as I had 2 x lithiums and 2 x Eneloop Pros going at the same time.
The last check I got it the lithiums had passed 1750mAh, but some time after that (before my next check) the internal BMS had disconnected the lithiums. That meant I also lost the discharge data- as far as the charger was concerned that battery had been physically removed. So it had turned off those two slots.
A better set up- like that one you posted- would be good. (I have thought about it in the past.) But it’s another piece of gear I’d have to find storage space for and realistically I wouldn’t use it much.
As it stands, the lithiums appear to be pretty close Ah wise with standard Eneloops. Their advantage being the output stays close the ideal 1.5V level until they’re basically flat. (I don’t have any new standard Eneloops to test, using one of my old ones wouldn’t be a fair to the Eneloops.) I do like the idea of the charger/ storage box supplied with the lithiums, as I’ve got Eneloops everywhere in the “battery drawer”. Price wise they’re also very close to being the same cost as 8 Eneloops, and the Eneloops don’t come with a charger.
I wondered if it would do that… 
Unfortunate.
So far I’ve only found a couple of 1.5v lithium that compete with a good NiMh in terms of capacity. The so-called current support on some (many?) of them does NOT compete with a good NiMh as the current conversion mechanism gets hot and cuts them off. Most 1.5v Li won’t go over 2A. Some struggle with 1.5A. Eneloops do better, much better. I first got them to use in underwater strobes and they were a failure for that use.
The current conversion also creates radio interference which some people don’t know about until they already have them.
The Xtars seem to be the top of the line but I haven’t been willing to actually buy them. Many of these kind of batteries simply are not worth the price unless you have a very specific need that they happen to match. Most of the time a good Eneloop does better.
My charger only goes to 1000mA, so I can’t do any vaguely scientific test above that. To be fair, I can’t imagine too many consumer goods would ask over that from a AA battery. The device should be using a larger battery if it’s drawing more than that.
My underwater strobes pulled about 3A briefly out of 4S-AA to charge the capacitor.
That’s one of the reasons the 1.5v Li didn’t work. They couldn’t do that.
The setup I have goes up to 2.6A. For lithium testing I can see going a lot higher than that. I consistently push good AA to 2.5A and they are fine with that. As they get old, that’s the first thing to go. As they age they are certainly relegated to ‘light duty’. But, most of their use is light duty, so I flog them for a LONG time.
There is some kind of inconsistent, poorly correlated relationship between internal resistance going up, current capacity compromise, and capacity loss. They don’t seem to follow a similar path of decline.
So that one dead battery (charger box LED turns red after about ten seconds charging) had me thinking… I decided to try putting it into a NiMh charger to see if that would “kick start” it charging - as the voltage on it was very low.
So I tried it and had to bump the charge current up to 1000mA to prevent the slot shutting down. The battery then started charging at 125mA. I kept a close eye on it (particularly the temperature of the battery) and after about 30 minutes the voltage had increased by 0.1V .
So I then took it off the NiMh charger and place it into the proper lithium 1.5V charger box. Guess what? It’s now happily charging and not causing an error. So I may have revived it.
I’ve done that also. I suggest marking it to keep track of that cell. Something may be amiss.
Well, that joy was short lived.
I left it charging for probably two hours and the power going to the charging box was static the whole time on 5 Watts. The LED was flashing green saying it was still charging okay. I pulled the battery out and it was warm, then decided to try a discharge test in the Powerex charger. As soon as I put it in and started the discharge test the battery voltage drop to virtually nothing. So it’s still dead.