Testing Eternalight with NiMH. Results

The test was done with 4 NiMH, charged on a Eveready rapid charger (3 hours). The brightness at the beggining is even better than with the Alk batteries, and it keeps that way for one hour 75 min. After that it decreases gradually, and at 150 min it is as bright as an ARC-AAA. In this moment I switched off, and let the unit rest for 5 minutes, when I switched on again the brightness came up again, but it last just 10 minutes decreasing gradually. Today I will repeat but using a tester to measure the voltage on the battery set.
I have to mention that the microchip became very warn during the first hour, and I was a litte worried about it, but after all this flashlight is designed to work with 3 Lithium AA.
By the moment the conclussion is that 150 min is a little bit dissapointing with a flashlight that claims 3000 min with Alkalines. I did read on this forum about an Eternalight consuming too much, is common this failure?

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FYI, I checked my chip and it did not get hot with 3 new lithium.

IMHO...I have a total of 3 of these in different flavors. I was never pleased with recharagables of any kind. I switched over to alkaline and lithium as the unit runs a LONG LONG time and it was not worth the effort unscrewing and screwing to try and save a little. What I did end up doing was cobbling up my front two screws by the continual opening and closing of the case.

I THINK that NIMH will lose their charge more rapidly than Nicad over time. True, they have a better out the gate performance. I bought 12 for my gps...6 to use and 6 to run with. I was not pleased with performance. I ended up going with a 24/12 adaptor and alkaline as a backup.

Hope this helps.

nimh are best for high current devices, as they can give high current without losing all their power. nicads are better for low current devices. With LED lights, the current is low so the nimh won't work best for it. The rayovac rechargable alkalines are 1.5 volts instead of 1.2, but they don't last very long. They are good for very low current devices since they don't have an inherent discharge like nicads or nimh. an unused nicad will lose 1% of its charge a day, a nimh even more although I don't recall the exact number. But a stored nimh will lose most of its usability if stored for about a month.

Nimh are great for things like digital cameras where the current load can be pretty high. For total capacity, a AA Nimh can be up to 1800 Mah, nicads are usually about 800mah.