Are your old Eneloops still going strong? - a survey.

[tatasal]

I have similar experience with my Eneloop AA and AAA. Great cells I should say.

Avoid the Powerex Imedion AAs....all 16 of them that powered my Fenix TK41 and Nitecore EA8 are now all junk, some of them even leaked!

 

[terjee]

On a Break In cycle they came in at 900 mAh of capacity. In addition they seem to have lost their low self discharge capability. I would put the cells in the camera and on about the second use within a couple of weeks the voltage would drop low enough to shut off the camera.

Many thanks!

Always interesting to learn about what it looks like when reliable things start to give in.

 

[GaryF]

Eneloop's are one of the best investments I ever made, still have a bunch from 2006 and 2007 going strong. My only failure was one that got a little bit crushed in transport.

i recently bought 16 of the current generation to use in 3AA to D cell adapters in a vintage radio.

 

[Kurt_Woloch]

I basically have Eneloops from two batches... 4 AAA cells I bought in 2010 and 12 AA cells made in April 2014. Out of the AAA cells, 3 have been badly impacted by use in a cheap wireless phone which did some heavy trickle charging to them, the 4th one should be OK. I'm now using two of the badly impacted 3 in the remote of my robotic vacuum whose batteries recently died, where they still seem to work good enough.

The AA's have been spread among various devices... currently, 6 are in my musical keyboard, 2 in a wireless microphone, 2 in a portable CD player and 2 in a toothbrush I bought yesterday to replace an Oral-B Vitality brush whose built-in battery died after nearly 7 years of use. So far none of the AA's have let me down.

 

[tandem]

In 2010 I started accumulating quite a few Eneloops / Duraloops and some Imedions - more than 100 cells and almost all are continuing to see regular use. So far I've only had to toss a couple AAA Duraloops.

It's time to run them all (when time permits) through a refresh cycle; I've only got one C9000 that I use for that so it'll take a long time ;-).

I plan on buying some 4th gen cells if I can't find where some of my stash have wandered off to, not because the Gen 1 cells are not usable.

 

[ChibiM]

In 2010 I started accumulating quite a few Eneloops / Duraloops and some Imedions - more than 100 cells and almost all are continuing to see regular use. So far I've only had to toss a couple AAA Duraloops.

It's time to run them all (when time permits) through a refresh cycle; I've only got one C9000 that I use for that so it'll take a long time ;-).

I plan on buying some 4th gen cells if I can't find where some of my stash have wandered off to, not because the Gen 1 cells are not usable.

Good luck!

 

[Bazsy]

I have 8 AA std Eneloops from around 2007-08. They are were used in a handheld GPS and in some AA flashlights and in a digital camera. Only one died by getting a sky-high IR for some reason. The rest is still going strong and having their stated capacity. I have also 8 AA Eneloop pros from the second generation. Those are used in a camera flash and also baby monitor and work just great.
I have recently bought 8 std and 8 pro AAs and 8 std AAAs from the latest generations from Japan and this might be enough for the next 10 years

 

[tandem]

I did a C9000 refresh/analyse on the first four cells at hand, a mixed bag of cells - one Amazon Basic (2 years old), one Imedion (7 yrs), one Duraloop (7 yrs), one Eneloop (3 years). The Duraloop, AB, and Eneloop all turned out with similar capacity reported by the C9000 using 0.5A charge and discharge ~ 1850mAh.

The Imedion reported only 220mAh usable capacity. I may do a refresh on that one just to see if that's real... but I suspect it's real. I have so far only tossed AAA and AA Imedions from my 2010 era purchases and probably have enough data points on that ... to discourage me from ever buying them again. That may not be fair given things change over the years.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

I went through and counted up all my Eneloops I think I have. 384. Yeah, way too many, and I might have missed some in a device or two I've forgot about. About half of them I've never used yet. Of all the rest (including some from 2006), none have failed me yet. One of the 2006 cells is showing its age. A few more have reduced capacity because I cooked them in a light that gets too hot. I have reverse-charged a couple of them (drained flat in a multi-cell device, with a cell getting a small negative voltage), but they show no ill effects of it.

I generally take good care of them. I usually charge them slow, on chargers that terminate reliably and don't trickle-charge. I think the most any of them have been cycled is probably 300 or 400 times, but probably not even that much. So, the biggest issue most of them face is age. But so far, they're holding up very well. Way better than any other brand I've had in the past (but I've only bought Eneloops for the past 10 years).

I usually charge at least 16 cells per day, so they get a lot of use. But that use is spread out over a lot of cells.

 

[Dragracer]

My first gen Eneloops from 2009 still have ~1750mAh, but a slightly higher internal resistance. But still good for the digital camera.
My 2nd gen Eneloops from 2010 are like new.


5 Years ago I put 4 Eneloops 2nd gen in a handheld vacuum cleaner instead of Sub C NiMh.
They are drained with 5A all the time and still are like new.
The original Sub Cs were dead after 3 years...

 

[MidnightDistortions]

I've only had Eneloops for about 4 years. My AAA Eneloop Pro batteries had 90% IR, but I cycled them a few times and now only have about 30% IR. Weird.

 

[Bazsy]

I've only had Eneloops for about 4 years. My AAA Eneloop Pro batteries had 90% IR, but I cycled them a few times and now only have about 30% IR. Weird.

Do you mean mOhm? % is not really a good way to describe IR.

 

[MidnightDistortions]

I get IR readings from the C9000 charger.

 

[MrMorden]

I just found a 4-pack of AAs, first-generation, NIB in a box of random batteries at home. I'd have purchased them in the UK; the date code on the package is 2008-02.

I threw them on a BQ-CC55 and it showed < 20% power. Which I guess shouldn't be surprising. Maybe I should've listed them on fleaBay (L@@K!!! RARE!!!), but it's too late now.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

I did some discharge tests on old Eneloops (12 years old, I've used since 2006), and some new Eneloops (bought a couple of months ago, did 2 cycles to refresh them).

The results:

Average of eight 12-year old AA Eneloops: 1852mAh
Average of four new AA Eneloops: 1972mAh

That's a 6% loss of capacity, assuming the old Eneloops had the same initial capacity as new Eneloops (tested after the 2nd cycle).

Test was done at 250mA drain. It's not testing how well they perform under high-drain usage, but I have occasionally used them in high-drain and they still perform fine. Their internal resistance is higher than new cells, so they probably have lost quite a bit more than 6% at high load. Still, for regular use, it's pretty good to lose only 6% capacity after 12 years!

 

[MrAl]

Hello there,

Circuit City closed up around 2009 and before that i remember seeing some of the first Eneloops being sold in one of their stores but they were 20 dollars (USD) for just four cells so i thought that was overpriced and did not buy them.
Shortly after that though i did buy some at another place, cant remember where though.
That means my oldest cells had to be around 8 years old last year, when i threw some of them out.
The only reason i threw them out was because one of my Panasonic chargers started to reject some of the cells, about 4 of them. This was probably due to higher internal resistance but i did not check that at the time.

I still rate them as one of the best cells i have ever owned however. In comparison, i have had Energizer high capacity cells that i used maybe three times and then chucked them right into the garbage. I also had Energizer AAA cells that i threw out, wrote to the company and got a coupon for four new ones, then threw them out too because they did not hold their charge for more than a week if that.

So Enerloops have my highest rating. I did find other cells that have low self discharge too, but i dont see them around anymore.
Of the Eneloops i have tested so far they all measure around 2000mAHr.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

That means my oldest cells had to be around 8 years old last year, when i threw some of them out.
The only reason i threw them out was because one of my Panasonic chargers started to reject some of the cells, about 4 of them. This was probably due to higher internal resistance but i did not check that at the time.

Yes, that's how they determine if a cell is old. Actually, they are likely trying to determine if the cell is an alkaline, which should not be charged. Alkalines have higher internal resistance than NiMH.

What charger were you using? I find that the Panasonic BQ-CC17 chargers will all still charge my old 12-year Eneloops. They won't charge other old NiMH cells, which have developed extremely high internal resistance. But the Eneloops still keep on chugging along.

 

[MrAl]

Yes, that's how they determine if a cell is old. Actually, they are likely trying to determine if the cell is an alkaline, which should not be charged. Alkalines have higher internal resistance than NiMH.

What charger were you using? I find that the Panasonic BQ-CC17 chargers will all still charge my old 12-year Eneloops. They won't charge other old NiMH cells, which have developed extremely high internal resistance. But the Eneloops still keep on chugging along.

Hi,

Yes i think the CC17 would work, but i was using the CC55 which charges with higher current. Maybe i threw them out too soon, but i think they were also showing signs of faster than normal discharge. As you probably know, high internal R also means faster discharge because the internal R drops more voltage and so the terminal voltage looks lower than it would be with lower internal R. So the cell becomes less useful anyway.

 

[Climb14er]

All of my AA and AAA Eneloops are from 2006-7 and every two months, I run them all through a Refresh and Analyze Program with the MaHa C9000 and all of the Eneloops still perform very well.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

Yes i think the CC17 would work, but i was using the CC55 which charges with higher current. Maybe i threw them out too soon, but i think they were also showing signs of faster than normal discharge. As you probably know, high internal R also means faster discharge because the internal R drops more voltage and so the terminal voltage looks lower than it would be with lower internal R. So the cell becomes less useful anyway.

You can always use them in low-drain stuff, like remote controls or low-output LEDs. As long as the self-discharge rate is slow, they work really well in low-drain devices, where higher IR doesn't matter.