I was shopping online for some Eneloop AA’s and at Target, there were these two 12-packs. Both were:
Panasonic eneloop AAA 2100 cycle, Ni-MH Pre-Charged Rechargeable Batteries - 12 Pack
· Recharge up to 2100 times.**
· Maintain up to 70% of their charge after 10 years (when not in use).*
· Pre-Charged at the factory using solar power and are ready to use.***
The mAh tells you how long the battery will go between charges, not the overall life of the battery. So more $$ means you get more usage out of each charge.
I assume the AA vs. AAA is a typo, I didn’t look them up.
We see the technology of the two batteries is identical. The only difference is one is physically bigger and so holds more magic electricity-making goo than the other one.
We also see that a AA is about 2.5 times as big and powerful as a AAA. but only costs about 30% more. So AAs, despite being more expensive, or more cost-effective.
Although /in this case/ it appears that you mixed up AA and AAA batteries, note that historically one of the ways of making cheaper cells when the technology was new and expensive (to my knowledge, in th 60’s, 70’s and 80’s) was to fit the smaller cell inside the bigger case, with packing.
So you could buy a C cell that was /actually/ a AA cell in a C package. (There were other similar packaging options)
I’ve never seen a AA cell that was a repackaged AAA cell, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. And it certainly used to be the case that you could get 800mAh rechargable AA cells using similar chemistry to 1100 mAh cells. AFAIK, that was just using older/cheaper manufacturing process.
You can even get those cases for your AAs. Since the AAs do still store a lot of energy, and can in theory be recharged many times, it works well enough.
In any case, what devices use C or D cells these days? Pretty much every high drain device has a rechargeable lithium battery, and low drain devices work fine on AAs.
Highest end flashlights use rechargeable lithium, and basic LED flashlights just use a double AA or 2.
The question posed by the OP has been answered. I have made that mistake more times than I know…
However, the OP mentioned “eneloop” batteries which caused me to look at the wikipedia page on those batteries. There have been several versions of eneloop batteries where the self-discharge rate is improved over time, sometimes at the expense of total capacity. It is possible that the difference the OP saw, besides being the size, might be from different generations of the batteries. The manufacturer gave the generations different names, it is entirely possible that the reseller “simplified” the names and is selling older generation batteries as new.
NiMH AAs are a mix bag. the older style (“non-low-self-discharge”) usually had 2300-2400 mAh capacity. Some manufacturers got them up to almost 2800 mAh, but the dirty little secret is that they did so by making the cells slightly “fatter” and I’ve had some devices like Xbox 360 controllers where they were a really tight fit.
IIRC the low self-discharge cells have a different separator design and material, which knocked capacity down to ~2100-2200 mAh.
which IMO is fine; they’re still better for high current draw devices because they still have more usable capacity under load than alkalines.
About a year ago I bought a battery powered LED lantern intended for camping or emergency use. IOW, for continuous long-duration ops.
The lantern body holds 3 D cells. It’s sold with an adaptor that fills that space and accommodates 3 AA cells. The factory specs of course all talk about the operating life using D cells while the package actually included 3 of the no-name Chinese 2-cents-apiece-in-Shanghai AAs.
So there’s one category of C or D devices. The Maglite-style flashlight-cum-billy club is another common use case. But overall I agree D and especially C are a dying format.
Aside: When was the last time any of us used, bought, or saw a B battery? IIRC it was the early 1970s for me. And even back then the device that wanted it was already an antique.
This year I have been using AA and AAA Panasonic eneloops for my remotes and fm radio headset, which I always seem to leave on.:smack: I happy with the whole operation so far.
Does anyone know how the chargers work? Is it a timed charge?
I ask because you can pop out a charged battery and put it back in the charge again, and it appears to run it through a new cycle.
On different note, the older digital cameras (and radios etc?) running on AAs or AAAs needed a minimum voltage to work, so people would just toss their batteries away when they go too low to work the item, and then would replace them. Most of the batteries still had 50% or so of their voltage, so were fine for things like older filament flashlights …I still have sacks of them around after finding them discarded:D)
it depends; some chargers offer a “cycle” feature which will discharge the cell then re-charge it. Which is a waste; it’s supposed to prevent “memory effect” (voltage depression) but that was only really ever a problem on an extremely old type of nickel cadmium cell. Fully cycling a NiMH or lithium rechargeable just shortens its overall lifetime.