Hi all, I had been looking over in the LED section and was pointed here.
Can some one tell me the average runtime of a #6 or #7 Eiger with a AAA Ni-Mh?
I did a non-scientific test with a #3 Eiger with an XP-G emitter. You can probably just about divide the results in half to get an estimate for a #6.
I used a generic NiMH AAA cell that rated at 850mAh on a refresh cycle on a LaCrosse BC900 charger. It's a LaCrosse cell, with a marketing-department rating of 1000mAh, but even though it's barely been used, and well cared for, it's never supported more than about 850-875mAh of actual capacity since new (6 months ago). Take this into consideration.
I compared the #3 XP-G narrow to a #4 Rebel-100 narrow that's fairly similar in brightness. I used a darkened room and hallway and stood far enough away from a wall that the hotspot was diffuse and judged both wall illumination and overall room / hallway illumination compared to the other light.
The #3 ran for about 5 hours until it appeared about 75% as bright as it had at the start.
Within another hour (by the 6 hour mark), it was down to less than 25% brightness.
At this point I was going to check the cell voltage but I didn't have a meter available.
An alkaline should have almost 50% more power capacity than this NiMH and at the relatively low current demanded by a #3, should be able to be drained almost completely.
The difference in efficiency between the Rebel and XP-G was very noticeable once the cell voltage dropped- I swapped heads, and whereas the XP-G was still handily illuminating the dark hallway (even at 25% of original output), the Rebel was barely able to illuminate a small area at the end of the hall, and the overall lighting was extremely dim. The hallway is a dark grey color, which diminishes the effect of reflections.