Originally posted by: dighn
Originally posted by: Baked
Should've bought sanyo eneloop batteries from costco or amazon.com if you don't have membership.
might be better to get higher mah instead of low self-discharge if he's "burning through" the batteries.
Not really. I'd sooner trust Sanyo's mAh ratings. Based on some of my own tests, done at constant current drain, while monitoring the voltage, 1700mAh Sanyo AA's performed about as well, if not better, than some 2250mAh Powerizer AA's. I even had some 700mAh Sanyo AAA's outperform a few of the lousier Powerizers.
Powerizer = super-cheap Chinese cells, with a pretty high failure rate. I'd say about half of those I've used have been effectively useless after less than a year of light use. Their discharge curves also generally show either weak voltage, or erratic declines.
I'd sooner trust "Made in Japan" than "Made in China."
Battery tests
I think the time wasn't in seconds, and that each tick was actually 2 seconds. I don't remember exactly anymore though.
All cells were discharged at the same constant current, and these are the resulting voltage curves. I used either 0.5A or 0.8A, but it was the same for all cells. They were all charged on the same charger beforehand, and left in overnight for a good trickle top-off charge.
The contenders:
- Sanyo AAA, 700mA
- Sanyo AA, 1700mA
- Powerizer AA, 2250mA
- Ansmann AA, 2000mA
- a Rayovac AA, capacity not indicated
The Sanyo AAA outperformed some of the weak Powerizers, and wasn't too far behind the Rayovac.
Meanwhile, the Sanyo AA landed right in the upper-end clustering.
Also note some of the dropoff curves, especially Powerizer AA 5 and AA 3. AA 5 started off low, stayed low, and showed some odd fluctuations. Some of the Powerizers also had trouble holding a voltage close to 1.0V.
Also of note: I bought the Sanyos at least a year before getting the Powerizers. Most of the Powerizers came "free" with various orders from ThomasDistributing.
