Harbor Freight NiCd Batteries

A Harbor Freight just opened in my area and they have all sizes of Chicago Electric brand NiCd batteries on sale for $3.49/pk. Are they any good?

I know that's a great price for rechargeables but even so, I don't want to buy a bunch and have them turn out to be crap. Money wasted is money wasted.

The AA and AAA sizes seem to have variable quality control (you will find some variability and lack of consistency in the capacities of individual cells).

The C and D size have a label capacity of 1500 mAh. 'nuff said.

Having been burned (literally) by cheap chinese cells, I would avoid them like the plague.

I use the cheap harbor freight NiCd's in my outdoor solar lights, but that's it. So far, they are working as well or better than the cheap cells that came with them.

*tip --> Wait for them to go on sale....they do regularly. You will be able to get them for anywhere from $1.99 to $2.99 on sale. As a matter of fact, I think they are having a 1 day sale on Nov. 28th.

I stick with Eneloops or Duracell Precharged LSD cells for almost everything else. I actually doubt if I will ever buy standard NiMh cells again. The LSD cells, in general, perform so much better. I love not having to worry about whether they are going to work after they have been sitting for week or two, or even a month or two.

Hehe...slowly throwing away all my Energizer 2500's as they develop high self discharge rates.

I have 8 Ray-o-Vac 1600 mAh cells that just refuse to die. These cells must be at least 6-8 years old and still going strong. Last time I checked they still running an average of about 1575mAh.

walmart has some AA nicads in their garden department (usually outdoors sort of I think they are $5 to $6 a 4 pack there. I had a bunch of AA nicads I sold that were cell phone pulls but I know a place I can get nicad and nimh AAs and AAAs for $1 a pack but don't need any and got tired of ripping packs apart. I have about 40 1600 mah nimh flat top AAs I pulled from packs I should do something with lol
I even have 2 4packs (unopened) of rayovac 1800mah AAs

Thanks for the advice and warnings.

I was there today and noticed some of the packs had corroded cells, so that pretty much made up my mind

Still, I bought a clean pack to see how they do.

I'll stick with the name brands.