Amateur showdown of AA sized batteries.

[chaosdsm]

This is a place holder for my battery testing. I'm not a professional, I don't have the time to put together a nice video presentation or do all the proper battery testing, and it will probably take me a month or more to complete. I do have the proper chargers for each battery chemistry that I will be testing. I'll be using time lapse photography to watch runtimes, so I may include some of those as video clips further down the road.

EDIT 3-28-2024: Adding 1 more flashlight to the mix, but only for limited batteries…. Maglite 5D with Malkoff drop-in 3-6D LED. Utilizing 3xAA to 1.5V D-cell adapters for testing. This is a single mode light so designation will simply be 'M'

I'm mostly interested in: 1> how the different rechargeable chemistries stack up to each other, and 2> separating hype from reality... in a pretty limited usage scenario anyway....

So, I picked up 4 each of two different single AA LED flashlights that can run different batteries from 1.2V up to 3.7V.
> Acebeam Pokelit AA Nichia 219F high CRI with stated lumens of 550/190/5 on the included Li-Ion batteries & 230/80/0.5 on alkaline or NiMh batteries.
> Lumentop Tool 2.0 CREE XP-L HD with stated lumens of:

14500	16 LM	85 LM	360 LM	650 LM	360 LM
Alkaline	3.7 LM	28 LM	140 LM	220 LM	140 LM
Ni-MH	3.7 LM	28 LM	140 LM	270 LM	140 LM

Because of how hot these lights get with Li-Ion in turbo mode, I will not test turbo mode runtime with Li-Ion.

The Contenders:
Primaries:
> Energizer MAX AA & Energizer Lithium AA: just using these to establish my baselines.

Rechargeables: NOTE: to help keep things straight, batteries rated in milliWATT hours will have the stated ratings at the end of the battery and are in blue text while batteries rated with milliAMP hours will have the stated rating after the brand name and are in black text. I have a minimum of 4 of each of these batteries for testing.
A> Xtar 1.5V Li-Ion 4150mWh - 1.975" x 0.575"
B> EBL 1.6V Ni-Zn 3000mWh - 1.975" x 0.58"
C> Acebeam 920mAh 3.7V 14500 Li-Ion - 1.99" x 0.57"
D> Orbtronic 1100mAh 3.7V 14500 Li-Ion protected - 2.05" x 0.58"
E> Eneloop Pro 2600mAh 1.2V NiMh (black wrapper) - 1.98" x 0.58"
F> EBL 2800mAh 1.2V NiMh - 1.98" x 0.585"
G> Eneloop 2000mAh 1.2V NiMh LSD (white wrapper) - 1.98" x 0.58"
H> BatterySpace 600mAh 3.2V 14505 LiFePO4 - 1.98" x 0.57" - these are rated with lowest discharge current of all these at only 0.6A max discharge - they will be going into solar yard lights after testing.
I> Energizer Max AA Alkaline 1.5V primary
J> Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA 1.5V primary

********************* placeholder for results ***********************
EDIT 3-19-2024: Adding battery dimensions above.
test data to be formated as follows:
> PmC1 = Acebeam Pokelit with medium output setting & Acebeam battery #1
> TtD4 = Lumentop Tool 2.0 with turbo output setting & Orbtronic battery #4 , etc...
> MA = 5D Maglite with Xtar batteries
> Time is listed as runtime in hh:mm:ss format +/- 10 seconds unless otherwise noted.
> Any anomalous readings will be in red text


PmC1 02:11:42 - PmC2 02:08:46 - PmC3 02:18:50 - PmC4 02:19:26
PtF1 02:21:50 - PtF2 02:04:52 - PtF3 02:18:36 - PtF4 01:59:46
PtG1 02:15:34 - PtG2 04:38:34 - PtG3 04:06:52 - PtG4 05:03:58
PtA1 05:47:11 - PtA2 2:44:55 - PtA3 02:47:19 - PtA4 05:47:11 (see video clip & description in next post)
PtB1 03:15:52 - PtB2 03:43:30 - PtB3 02:37:18 - PtB4 - 03:10:02

TtG1 01:11:06 - TtG2 01:11:50 - TtG3 01:16:24 - TtG4 01:10:04
TtF1 01:32:58 - TtF2 01:35:18 - TtF3 01:35:18 - TtF4 01:25:24
TtA1 01:58:03 - TtA2 01:58:25 - TtA3 01:56:41 - TtA4 01:55:19
TtB5 01:33:30 - TtB6 01:29:40 - TtB7 01:24:56 - TtB8 01:31:22

MA 10:45:10 / 13:21:16 (+/- 10 minutes) (see video clip & description in next post)

 

[chaosdsm]

Here's the Malkoff 3-6D head in my Maglite 5D flashlight running Xtar 1.5V Li-Ion rechargeable with 3xAAp to D-Cell adapters: Fortunately, I swapped batteries just before it went out the first time and can be seen in this clip: Frame rate is 30 frames per second, photos were taken every 10 minutes

And here's the Xtar showdown - photos are taken 1 every 15 seconds. First half of clip is all 8 lights with frame rate sped up 800%, till just before the Tool 2.0 start shutting off, then normal speed. 2nd half I've adjusted the shutter speed to better capture the light output and only have the 2 Pokelit that are still running in frame. 2nd half is also sped up 800%.

Because of how late in the night it was getting, and I didn't want to keep slow draining the batteries, I went ahead and ended the testing just over 5hr 47min after start.

I initially thought maybe it was a pair of batteries that were causing the issue, but turned out to be the two flashlights. I put the other set of 8 batteries in and re-ran the test with virtually identical results including Pokelit #1 & #4 having the greatly reduced output where the batteries should have cut off completely.

 

[the_real_chud]

This is great, thanks for all the time and effort.

 

[chaosdsm]

Weird... the board won't let me edit the first post


So far, these Acebeams are blowing my mind....
Just got data in on the Energizer Max Alkaline batteries running turbo mode.
> Margin of error for the Acebeam's are 10 minutes
> Margin of error for Lumentop, only 2.5 minutes

All 4 Lumentop Tool flashlights starting from turbo, ran about 1.5hrs.... When I tested the batteries, 3 days after the lights had shut off, all 4 batteries were showing 1.35V.

All 4 Acebeam Pokelit flashlights starting from turbo, ran for over 2.5 days. When testing the batteries about 20 hours after last light went out, all 4 batteries were under 0.85V, with the lowest being just 0.56V in flashlight #2 which ran for a total of 85hr:15min:36sec, the shortest run was flashlight #4 which ran for 69hr:5min:10sec

Also ran the Energizer Max in the 5-D Maglite with Malkoff head: 80hr:23min:20sec - margin of error 10 minutes.

The Pokelit's lowest mode is just 5 lumens, while the Tool 2.0 is 16 lumens, but clearly the Pokelit driver also has the ability to smoothly run in lowest mode without regards to low battery voltage..... probably a bad thing for continuous use of rechargeable batteries though...

I think I'm done with the Alkaline testing.... if it takes that long in the Pokelit starting from turbo, I don't even want to imagine med or low runtimes

I'll continue with the Xtar 1.5V rechargeables, the Ni-Zn, and the Eneloop Pro. Next up: high/medium mode testing, and I don't think low-mode testing will be necessary at this point with the lower voltage batteries, but will definitely test low mode with the 3.2V LiFePO4, and 3.7V Lithium's.

 

[chaosdsm]

Here's an unexpected outcome.... especially considering the previous Acebeam Pokelit performance against the Lumentop Tool 2.0:

Pokelit stay at Medium output full term then drop out, while the Tool 2.0 do a step-down and keep going.... It's the exact opposite of what's been happening with the 1.xV batteries.

 

[chaosdsm]

So in the above test, the Pokelit had the Acebeam 920mAh batteries, and the Tool 2.0 had the Orbtronic 1100mAh batteries. With the batteries reversed, the outcome was still the same. The Tool 2.0 still ran longer than the Acebeam, and in all cases, the Orbtronic batteries lasted up to 41 minutes longer than the Acebeam batteries as to be expected with the stated capacities.

 

[zerodish]

I picked up some X2 Power from batteriesplus. They are about .5mm thinner than the duracells. Some rechargable batteries are too fat to be used in some lights. Before that I used Panasonic batteries which are also thinner but are no longer made. My feeling is the X2 power is a premium battery with a premium price. I've had a lot of batteries but the ones that survived the longest are the low power Rayovacs. I have a 30 year old Cateye red flasher with 30 year old batteries in it that work fine.