CTA DB-12AAA 1200 mAh ?

[mandrake]

I would like to know if anyone has used these batteries. I ran across them and decided to try them as they are rated at 1200 mAh. This is considerably higher then any of the other NIMH AAA cells that I have. I thought they might be a good match for my L0D CE Q4! I ran them through the "break in" cycle on my MAHA C9000 (I have done it three times now) and only got a range of between 650 and 750 mAh over all eight batteries that I bought. I would like to know if anyone else has measured their capacity and what were the results. Did I just get a bad batch?

Phil

 

[SilverFox]

Hello Phil,

Welcome to CPF.

Wow. It appears that CTA took some liberties when the re-labeled those cells. As far as I know, CTA is not a battery manufacturer, so they can label their cells anyway they want to.

You have a couple of choices. You can accept that they are more like 800 mAh cells, or you can contact whoever you purchased them from and explain that you seem to have gotten a batch of "crap" cells and would like to return or exchange them.

You will be asked how you tested the cells. You simply tell them that you ran them on the Break-In mode of the Maha C-9000 which follows the IEC 61951-2 international standard for determining the capacity of NiMh cells.

If they have any problems with that, have them contact me and I will go to bat for you.

I have heard several complaints about CTA cells being a lot lower in capacity than they are labeled. I personally have some CTA 2400 mAh AA cells that test out to around 1900 mAh.

Good luck.

Tom

 

[mandrake]

Tom,
I got them from Thomas Distributing. The same place that I got my C9000. I wrote to them I got a nice reply saying that they did not recommend any "conditioning" cycles, but rather that the batteries be used fro three or four charge discharge cycles in whatever device I was to use them in. Then if the performance was not satisfactory, I could return them for an exchange. Of course, it really would not be worth paying for return shipping and exchanging them for another set of over rated cells. This is why I also asked them if they had ever tested any of these cells (according to their web site Thomas has done in-house testing on many of their products), and why I decided to ask here if anybody had any experience with these cells. I probably will end up just keeping them, but it is too bad, I could have had Eneloop AAA cells for the same price.

Thanks for the reply,
Phil

 

[SilverFox]

Hello Phil,

In principle, I wish that everyone would return under performing cells. This might promote more accurate labeling.

However, often the economics don't favor this approach...

On a side note, the CTA cells are of reasonable quality and seem to perform well, they are just labeled way over their actual capacity.

Tom

 

[monkeyboy]

Ansmann have recently released 1100mAh AAAs.
http://www.ansmann.de/cms/consumroo.../newsdetail/article/nimh-micro-aaa-power.html
I reckon their cells are quite conservatively rated based on tests I've seen of previous products.

It would be nice if someone would test these out to see if the capacity claims are true. Their 2850mAh AA's also look interesting.