I no longer buy Duracell. I had a pack of AA that leaked and damaged several pieces of equipment. Three batteries started leaking in the package and I threw the entire retched mess out. They were still within the expire date too. no more Duracell for me. Ever.
Office Depot is quite a bit higher and sells a brand I no longer buy.
Who else has them cheap?? Lets find the best price out there.
I know the highest. Grocery stores. I bought them there when I was young and dumb. Paying double the price. I noticed the other day a two pack of 9v batteries was almost $8 at Kroger. :smack: Can’t believe how many years I bought batteries there.
I don’t know what you are using them in, but Dollar Tree has Sunbeam brand alkaline AAA and AA at 4 for $1. They seem to do just fine in my remote controls and LED flashlights. I think their 9 V alkaline ones are a dollar each.
They’re Duracell but Costco has AA batteries for $15 per 40. I’d guess that Sam’s Club or another warehouse store has similar pricing.
Monoprice sells a 24 pack of Monoprice-branded AA batteries for $4.53. Can’t speak from personal experience but the reviews give them a 5-star average. That said, shipping kills the deal unless you’re buying multiple packs ($7.xx for one pack, $9.xx for four…)
CVS is almost always has the lowest per battery cost. The promotions rotate so it can be confusing what packaging is the most cost efficient. That is CVS brand batteries that have a decent rating and cycle through stock regularly.
Store brand batteries make sense in devices that drain them fast anyhow. They aren’t in the device long enough to leak. My zoom h4N digital recorder eats AA’s. It only uses 2. Six hours of recording will drain them. I think they’d last longer if it used 4 instead. But they were keeping the case size as small as possible. I carry a spare set of batteries in my recording bag.
I’ll check at Sams next time I’m there shopping and see what deals they offer on batteries.
I’ve also found - and read in Consumer Reports’ “Shop Smart” Magazine - that Home Depot is the best. Maybe not on all package sizes, but for name-brand batteries you will find the best deal there.
I find the best places are large electronics stores with sections for hobbyists and small makers/repairers. Think Fry’s Electronics and such. Big packs for little $. E.g., they have their own brand AAs at 100 for $18, 40 for $6. But I find those a little too cheaply made and go with the store brand at MicroCenter: 40 pack for $12, but on sale for cheaper.
A bit pricey but you can reuse them dozens of times. The advantage of the Eneloops over older rechargeable batteries is they don’t lose much charge just sitting on the shelf. Old NiCd rechargeable would lose something like 10% of their charge each month.
Would rechargeables typically give the same service time as an alkaline? I get about 6 to 7 hours recording time before the AA’s are exhausted and its time for new ones. If I could get 5 hours with rechargeables that would be enough and then I could recharge overnight.
I’m quite interested. I agree its a terrible waste of resources to pitch used up batteries in the landfills.
You shouldn’t be pitching used batteries in the landfill; don’t you have battery recycling programs where you live? I accumulate batteries until I’m near a collection point.
I think Radio Shack’s stores have a drop off bins to recycle batteries. Or they did before going bankrupt. I’ll call and see if they their stores still have recycle collection bins.
I rarely have more than a couple dozen batteries to recycle at the end of the year. Can’t wait too long or they begin to leak and make a dangerous mess.
They’re good batteries too; with 2 little boys, we tend to go through batteries fairly fast, so I’ve tried a lot of the cheap ones (hint: stay away from the AC Delco cheapo alkalines- they’re like 2/3 the capacity of regular AA alkalines)
Rechargeables are interesting- for lower drain devices, they’re not any better than alkalines, and may even be worse.
But for high drain devices, they keep their voltage higher for longer under load, so for your recorder, they may be just the ticket. Just make sure you get LSD (low self-discharge) nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries, as they’ll keep their charge for a very long time after being recharged, unlike non LSD ones, which will lose them in a matter of days.
The Sanyo/Panasonic Eneloop batteries are the gold standard, although I’ve had really good results from Tenergy Centura batteries as well as the Amazon Basics rechargeables and the Energizer rechargeables, all of which have slightly higher capacity (2300 mAh vs. 2000 mAh) than the Eneloops, but less total recharge cycles. (~500 cycles vs. 2000 cycles).
I get mine at the Dollar Tree (I forget how much they are because the pricing structure there is so confusing but they are like really cheap). They probably aren’t the best batteries in the world but they get the job done just fine for electronics such as remotes and wireless keyboards. One set usually last months. I get a couple of 4 packs of AA and AAA batteries a year and that meets all my needs for some hard to calculate price per year but I am fairly sure it isn’t a lot.
It depends on the device, in all honesty. Ni-MH’s (the most common rechargeable battery) only put out 1.2V per battery, as supposed to 1.5V for an alkaline. However, most devices work fine off the lower voltage rechargeable batteries, and depending on the capacity, may even last longer than alkalines.
Of course then you can recharge the Ni-MHs, whereas you can’t recharge an alkaline.
If you’ve got a high drain device that uses 4 or less batteries, you should be fine buying a set of high capacity Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. Over 4 batteries in your device? Use alkalines, as the voltage difference will be too steep.
I live in the UK, but once there was a good deal at our local Curry’s/PC World store. They were selling boxes of 40 Alkaline batteries for £2.97. Unfortunately they only had AAA’s left (which I bought all 3 boxes, so 120 batteries in total). If they had AA’s at the time I would have got loads of those too.
Nowadays… I go for whatever shop sells them at the best price per battery.