Standard Eneloops or Eneloop XX 2500's?

[+Psychaesthetic]

I had a guy at a local electronics shop sold me a packet of standard white 1800mAh Eneloops a few weeks back now.

 

I remember standing there in his store arguing with him about the capacity. "i don't want those, they're only 1800's. I want at least 2500mAh" I started by telling him. He tells me he doesn't have anything higher in AA's, but to trust him, "..the Eneloops are just great batteries."

 

"Trust a salesman?", I say, "Why on earth would I do that? Are you serious?" .. I then vomit-up all the hastily absorbed info on capacity, and ask him how on earth a pair of 1800mAh batteries can outperform a pair of 2500mAh ones. So he starts getting a bit bored trying to sell the Eneloops, and neither of us thinks we have any hope of convincing the other we're right, when he tells me he'll drop $5 off the 4-pack. "Give me two packs for $10 off and I'll buy em, 'spose I can always bring em back if you're wrong and they end up sucking."

 

So I buy them, bring em home and top-up their charge, then stick em in the (then Magellan 110 I was using) device and am shocked to learn the guy wasn't lying! They're great batteries!! Compared to the Varda AND Energizers I had (2300 and 2000 respectively), these little 1800mAh Eneloops last almost twice as long! Stunning!

 

Since then I have been happy with the Eneloops, and want to buy some more, but I am unsure whether the XX 2500's are better than the standard white ones.

 

That's where YOU come in, if YOU have used both, and can inform me whether to stay with the white ones, or step-up to Eneloop XX's.

 

Anyone?

Edited April 16, 2014 by Psychaesthetic

[+Mockingbird559]

have both

no major complaints with either

 

given a choice, I would take XX

 

cache happy

[+Psychaesthetic]

have both

no major complaints with either

 

given a choice, I would take XX

 

cache happy

 

Cheers!

 

My only desire is they last longer than the 1800's, and aren't a cheaper gimmicky version of the standard Eloops.

[+andyakashrek]

Be aware that the standard eneloops can be recharged for more cycles over their lifetime. I use the standard version and have a maha c9000 charger, when they get low I chuck them in the charger, discharge and then recharge. Carry a spare set in the field.

[+Psychaesthetic]

Be aware that the standard eneloops can be recharged for more cycles over their lifetime. I use the standard version and have a maha c9000 charger, when they get low I chuck them in the charger, discharge and then recharge. Carry a spare set in the field.

 

Yeah i'm trying to get only devices that run on AA's and take a dozen or so batteries with me, so I want batteries that give me the most juice per cycle, probably moreso than batteries that recharge 2000 times.

[+Psychaesthetic]

I know too they have 3000mAh batteries, but i don't know which brands are trustable, but zi know Eneloops are

[Forkeye]

My XXs are black and are 2400 Ma Hr. But I have not used them much yet to comment on them and have never used the white ones ,so I guess I am not much help.

[dictum9]

Get 3rd generation Eneloops, they are at 2,000 mAh. They keep going for 5 years. And with low self-discharge. I believe there is a 4th gen out but not available just yet.

 

Costco has a good deal on those.

 

Higher capacity cells age faster, so a 2700 mah cell may not have all that in a year, and secondly may self-discharge to the 2,000 mah level in a month.

 

If you need the highest runtime at any price, get the highest capacity you can get, the 2700 mah I think is it. Provided you recharge it all the time and not worried about replacing cells soon or losing capacity in a few weeks.

 

Some of these 2300 mah cells were just terrible. Poor runtime, very high self-discharge.

 

I have 6 year old Eneloops that keep going. Amazing. My Maha Powerex 2700 mah cells died within a year or two.

[+BAMBOOZLE]

The best combination is a quality MAHA charger and the Eneloop 2500's ( Black )....for me anyway. Used PowerX for many years with no problems but the Eneloops are better.

[+Psychaesthetic]

The best combination is a quality MAHA charger and the Eneloop 2500's ( Black )....for me anyway. Used PowerX for many years with no problems but the Eneloops are better.

 

The charger has to work via USB, cos I'll be charging from a solar panel & 9000mAh battery that goes with it, so I'm limited to USB chargers, but I'll grab the XX Eloops and see how they go.

 

I'm willing to take a dozen or more AA's to save on relying on the solar charger for as long as possible, since I'll already be lugging 25kgs of pack around anyway .. but I'm already concerned about the efficiency of the usb charger I have.

 

It has a large blue LED lit panel that's very flashy when at home, but uses energy to power, mm.

 

Anyway, a 50/50 mix of 2500's and standard Eneloops will be alrighht i reackon.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Psychaesthetic

[+Psychaesthetic]

Alright so after much walking back and forward across the shopping centre comparing stock, I've upgraded my new Garmin 650 with a SanDisk Ultra 64gb memory card, a 4-pack of Eneloop XX 2550mAh and a hard camera case that is just about the right size.

 

The batteries went in fully-charged at 7:00pm, so I'll be keepong one eye on the battery indicator for comparison to the standard white 1900mAh ones.

 

Spun-out when I opened the micro sd and stuck it in the 650 only to find it didn't recognise it! I took a few test photos .. Then checked the photo-viewer and "No Photos" was all it said! .. Anyhoo, one 20kb free utility download later, it's formatted fat32 and working fine, with enough memory for all the maps I could possibly need, and/or ~30,000 8MP happy-snaps!

 

I *did* move the Garmin Topo Aus/NZ map to the 650's internal memory, since the old card I used was only 4gb and slow like grass growing, but now, with such a massive memory card there's so much space I figure it's best to leave the i3.5gb of internal memory free for tracks, caches, routes mainly tracks though.

 

I'm unsure how many tracks can be recorded on the O650 but if it's only limited by space, then (given the tracks I've recorded thus far have been around 12kb per kilometer) thst adds up to a ludicrously huge number of tracks *and* geotagged photos attached to them. I could conceivably spend 6 months in the Antarctic, recording all my tracks and pics of penguins and polar bears every day, and there'd still be room for more when I got back to civilization to put them on my laptop.

 

Not bad at all.

[+DonB]

Be aware that the standard eneloops can be recharged for more cycles over their lifetime. I use the standard version and have a maha c9000 charger, when they get low I chuck them in the charger, discharge and then recharge. Carry a spare set in the field.

There is no need to discharge a NiMH battery because they don't develop a memory. I have read that the battery experts say discharging them all the way will do more harm then good. I have Eneloops that are quite old and just top the charge and have had no problems with them. I have some part numbers of what Sanyo calls their 3rd generation Eneloops that claim they will retain 75% of their charge after sitting for five years. The number for the AA batteries is HR-3UTGB and the AAA batteries are HR-4UTGB

Edited April 17, 2014 by DonB

[+Psychaesthetic]

White ones I have on my desk are HR-3UTGB, so second generation i assume? They're good anyway. Best life of any of the other AA NiMh I have here. Hopefully the XX's will be even better again.

 

They've been in the 650 since 7:00pm on the dot, and it's 10:33pm now, but that's no test yet, since even the white 1900mAh ones don't lose the first 1/4 power-bar for 4-6 hours. These are 2550mAh XX's, so should outlast the whites a good bit.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Psychaesthetic

[+DonB]

White ones I have on my desk are HR-3UTGB, so second generation i assume? They're good anyway. Best life of any of the other AA NiMh I have here. Hopefully the XX's will be even better again.

 

They've been in the 650 since 7:00pm on the dot, and it's 10:33pm now, but that's no test yet, since even the white 1900mAh ones don't lose the first 1/4 power-bar for 4-6 hours. These are 2550mAh XX's, so should outlast the whites a good bit.

OOPs, I turned the numbers around, and just corrected them on my previous post. The ones you have are the third generation AAs.

[+Psychaesthetic]

Well the first cycle with the Eloop XX's is going pretty well.

 

Last night, at 7:00pm I inserted the fully charged batteries and switched the 650 on. At 12:30am it was switched off at bedtime, having been on the whole 5.5 hours.

 

This morning at 11:00am I turn the unit on, and for several hours is sat on my desk before I took it to the shop with me, then had a break when I got back for an hoir or so until about 3:30pm when I took the dog for a 2 hour caching doggie-walk. The whole two hours we used auto-routing to navigate to the GZeroes, and all up i took somewhere around 50 8mp Geotagged photos while we were out, mostly of her running around the park where one of the caches was located.

 

The entire 2 hours, also, we had Tracking set to maximum points, without auto-stop, so there are 1500+ track points over the entire 6.3km walk there and back.

 

We got back aboit 20 minutes ago, and the ti e now is (looks) 6:17pm. Battery charge (according to the indicator) is still 4/4 bars, so close enough to full.

 

Recapping, that's 5.5 hours last night, and almost 7.5 hours (with heavy use) today for a total of 13 hours and it still reports fully charged. I *do* expect it will drop a bar soon, but even then that's pretty impressive battery life considering it still has almost full charge, so I'll leave it on until bedtime again tonight and see how long we get before reaching the 25% or 1/4 bars level.

[+Psychaesthetic]

They've just given the "low battery" warning, having been on 20 hours all up, so that's not bad for one pair of NiMh's.

 

I hoped they'd last-out the day and hit the 30 hour mark, but had a feeling they'd discharge pretty suddenly towards the end, which they did. Wish they made 10,000mAh Eloops!

[+Mineral2]

Energizer's 2600 mAh batteries are not low discharge, so unless you take a freshly charged pair and use them constantly to the end, a lot of the battery's capacity is lost while idle. Eneloops have an extremely low self-discharge rate which is why you can charge them and leave them on the shelf for months and come back to using them without need for a top-off. The discharge rate on the XX aren't quite as slow as the regular 1900mAh white eneloops, but it's better than any Energizer battery you're going to buy.

 

In the end, you get maybe an extra 2-3 hours of usage in a GPS with the XX than you do with the regular Eneloops. They don't have as long of a shelf life, and don't last as many recharge cycles. That 30% increase in use time comes at a 100% increase in cost. That is, you can buy an 8-pack of Eneloops for the same price as a 4-pack of Eneloop XX. So unless you NEED that extra bit of capacity, you're better off buying more of the regular eneloops and bringing along an extra set whenever you go out.

[+Psychaesthetic]

Energizer's 2600 mAh batteries are not low discharge, so unless you take a freshly charged pair and use them constantly to the end, a lot of the battery's capacity is lost while idle. Eneloops have an extremely low self-discharge rate which is why you can charge them and leave them on the shelf for months and come back to using them without need for a top-off. The discharge rate on the XX aren't quite as slow as the regular 1900mAh white eneloops, but it's better than any Energizer battery you're going to buy.

 

In the end, you get maybe an extra 2-3 hours of usage in a GPS with the XX than you do with the regular Eneloops. They don't have as long of a shelf life, and don't last as many recharge cycles. That 30% increase in use time comes at a 100% increase in cost. That is, you can buy an 8-pack of Eneloops for the same price as a 4-pack of Eneloop XX. So unless you NEED that extra bit of capacity, you're better off buying more of the regular eneloops and bringing along an extra set whenever you go out.

 

In any circumstances, I would much prefer a longer-lofe battery than one that recharges 10,000 times.

 

The XX's I got the other day are 2550mAhs, and state up to 500 cycles, which doesn't aound much comparatively, but seriously we're talking about $20 a 4-pack.

 

Break it down a different way, that's two-thousand 2550mAh batteries for $20. Comparing the lifespan of the higher Ah batteries to the lower is splitting hairs when you think about how much a good battery will give you before it's days are up.