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Dreadful modern batteries

FWIW some film and TV sound people seem to rate the cheapo Ikea LADDA rechargeables. Rumoured to come from the same factory as Eneloops but who knows!

Edit: YouTube vid claiming LADDA = Eneloop Pro
 
About ten years ago I bought a Duracell AAA/AA charger and two sets four AAs and one of AAA. Still using them blamelessly now. Clocks are changed at the change of BST/GMT twice a year. It means that I have emergency transistor radio for power cuts, and a ready supply of charged cells for my bike. I no longer own a hifi remote.

I have no idea if Duracell still make good rechargeables, but the saving over the years has been useful as the original re-chargeables were only about twice the price of use-once cells. The charger cost a tenner at the time, which was not cheap, but still only what a trip to the pub [remember those] would have cost.

Best wishes from George
 
In the early 80's I worked briefly in a factory that made the casings for Duracell batteries.
It was quite intriguing how cutting strip metal and constantly bashing a disc with successive pressing tools produced the little cans that housed the chemicals.
That factory in West Sussex can no longer be there, as multiple cost cutting and sourcing from afar prevailed, no doubt.
 
I use eneloops where the device doesn't get cold (e.g. outside) and Energizer ultimate lithium (L91) for devices exposed to low temperatures.
The L91s are expensive, and may provide an over-voltage to some equipment when new, but they last a long time, and work really well when it's cold (e.g. non-rechargeable bike LED lights that sit in the garage at -15C)

https://www.panasonic-batteries.com/en/news/battery-leakage-causes-and-prevention
It's always a good idea to take batteries out of devices that won't be used for a long time.

Duracells do seem to have a particularly bad reputation.

My work uses quite a lot of L91s for testing, and I take the discharged ones and put them in my remotes since the voltage is still quite decent (1.4v) and they won't leak.
 
My school calculator, an FX100 from 1983, still has its original pair of Casio AAs. The calculator was still working when I last saw it about four years ago.
 
I had a Energiser go pop in a flashgun and leak acid.
The Ikea rechargeable battery do seem to be very good.

Pete
 
Enerloops for me, I must have 30 of them in various remotes. They were my goto for camera flash as well, despite their lower voltage
 
We have a rowing machine with a computer thing. Fired it up yesterday to burn off some of that Xmas excess thing like you do and hey, guess what?

That's right, 2 x Duracell AA's had melded and moulded green gunk everywhere. Computer says no. 3 years old.

Granted the machine hasn't been used for absolutely Yonks , and it lives in the conservatory, but we have a wireless thermometer for the heating in the living room that I installed maybe 12 years ago? It has the original Duracell battery inside. I've never had to replace it (tempting fate here, I know)

Modern Batteries really are Rubbish.
 
I’ve now moved to Eneloops for everything where they’ll fit with another 16 of them arriving tomorrow. Amazon seem very low on stock and only have the standard white AAAs at present, but I assume they should be ideal for remotes, clocks etc. I had a spare set of four Pro AAs and AAAs which I’ll distribute around things that might need a bit more grunt (bright LED torches etc). I could do with finding a leak-proof solution for 9Vs now for sound meters, my Fluke multimeter etc, but I’ve not had any of those leak yet, nor have I a 9V charger. I just hope the Eneloops are reliable long term. I really don’t care about the price, I just don’t want to find any leaks in stuff.
 
Question for battery experts: I have a whole bunch of eneloops of different ages. I'm pretty sure some have stopped working properly as they don't seem to last as long as they used to. How can I work out which are OK and which I should ditch?
 
No expert, but I’m pretty sure you’d need one of those fancy chargers that can do charge/discharge cycles and show statistics. Either that or just go on hunch. Both types of Eneloop allege a good charge/recharge life, exceptionally so in the white ones. Another hint, assuming you have a charger that monitors each battery individually, is if any get appreciably hot in the charger and take longer than others to show as full. I’ve just got the standard black Eneloop charger which goes red, amber green for each battery location IIRC. As such you may be able to tell something by charging some old ones and new ones at the same time. I don’t know anything about batteries though, so that’s all guesswork.
 
gintonic said:
indeed. I have stopped buying batteries from Amazon Marketplace and Ebay. Had two lots of fake Duracells.

Worst was the fake Nokia phone battery, that started smoldering a few days of insertion, replacement from amazon marketplace swelled up so much the back of the phone popped off.
Click to expand...
I had the same problem with a macbook which swelled and damaged the touch pad area. They fixed it for free.
 
I have 4 cordless phones and run them on rechargeables. Wanted to buy uncharged ones, but few and far between so paid a bit more for some '5 year guaranteed' Duracell, pre-charged. They needed charging when I got them and are no better than any other ones I've had over the years. They do hold a minimal charge for days, but I'm loth to start a conversation when they're so low and prefer to wait until they die before recharging.. My other phones often just die when someone calls or worse, when I'm getting a code call for a savings account and have to rush downstairs for another phone.

I remember Maplins' rechargeables used to be quite good. My friend recommends Panasonic, so I'll try those next time, but I've gone off Duracell, whether they be super, extra super, ultra, super ultra or whatever useless label they give them.
 
I spent (too) long digging in to all the rechargeable options three years ago. I don't know where things stand today, but back then the Amazon Basics were rebadged 1st gen Eneloops (who were shipping 3rd gen. at that time), and the Amazon Basics Pro were rebadged 1st gen Fujitsu Pros. Too many options to choose from so I ended up going for ABs everywhere, with Lithium for grunt/long life/no leaks. Not had a problem with the ABs in three years since.
 
we had loads of rechargeable batteries for remotes etc- anything that took AA, AAA, C or D (whatever happened to B or A for that matter)

But the bottom line for us was we were too bone idle or forgetful to recharge. In the end we ditched the lot.
 

Interesting tear-down of some NiMh batteries including an Eneloop. Looks pretty dry in there compared to the nasty soggy mush in typical alkaline cells. The last one contains fire though.

Still trying to research this as I’m a total noob to battery technology. I really do know nothing at all, but the implication seems to be that NiMh rechargeables and lithium both seem far less leak-prone than alkaline. This really is my main interest.

I’m also curious as to the mechanism that can make one of a pack of alkaline batteries leak. It seems to me that that leaks tend to occur when multiple batteries are chained to produce a higher voltage, e.g. 3 x AAA to produce 4.5V. I guess if one battery discharges first for whatever reason the other two would effectively attempt to charge it, and maybe that is the point of real failure. I can’t recall ever finding a leaked battery in a device that only uses a single one, e.g. my AT637, little Braun alarm clocks (of which I have several) etc.

I’m also assuming a typical remote control is an ‘always on’ device, i.e. some aspect is always active and scanning to see if any buttons are being pressed, rather than each and every button also being a power switch, i.e. there would be a constant low current drain in such a device that would be absent from say a torch which is either ‘on’ or ‘off’. Even so this doesn’t explain things as other equipment that is not ‘always on’ and should have no current drain when off (e.g. a Casio or Yamaha music keyboards, GameBoys etc) still suffer from leaks and you are often hard pressed to find nice vintage examples that don’t have battery compartment damage. There is something I’m not understanding here, likely many things!
 
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