Fake Eneloops ?

Is there still a problem with fake Eneloops? When I searched I found most of the complaints dated a few years ago & they were from Europe & the Pacific area. I live in North America. The eneloop AAs I ordered from Amazon came in four packs in a white cardboard backed package. I just ordered some more from Amazon listed by Thomas INC & they came in a shiny foil type package with a Sanyo hologram on the front with a crown on the upper right that has new in the middle of the crown. The main concern I have so far is there are no vents on or around the + terminal of the battery. What do you guys think?

The new 1500 cycle eneloops that I purchased don't have a vent on the positive terminal. But, they definitely perform like Eneloops. Check out the photographs I posted in the Colored Eneloops thread.

Apparently, Sanyo changes the cell design sometime late 2010.

Can you post the date code on the Eneloop you got?

If you got a Maha C9000, please do a break-in for 2000mAh capacity and report the result.

My latest Gen2 Eneloop with date code "10-09 E4" still has vents on them. I am still searching for another vendor that carry newer Gen2 Eneloop to verify that the vent-less battery are indeed real.

I am a little weary of Eneloop that has a break-in capacity of more than 2000mAh. BVH has a break-in test of 160 Gen2 Eneloop and most of cells are below 2000mAh. Unfortunately, this great thread was wipe out during the forum crash and BVH has not re-post the data for all 160 cells.

The date code 10-12VD. I have not charged yet. Here are pics of the packaging & batteries without vents.

Here are some working links of the photos from AIRASSAULT18B:

http://img811.imageshack.us/i/pict0002j.jpg

http://img706.imageshack.us/i/pict0024rs.jpg

The new 1500 cycle Eneloops that I received came in the same package as yours. This is the only photograph that I took of my package. (I had to dig it back out of the trash at the time.) Notice that there is no vents on the positive terminal. They are definitely genuine, the performance is better than my older Eneloops. I ran 16 new 1500 cycle Eneloop cells, that came in packaging the same as your photographs, on a break in cycle on a MH-C9000 and measured an average capacity of 2007mAh.

Russel thanks for the quick response & photo fix. Now I know these are good so I will open & use. What did I do wrong in posting my pics so I will not make the same mistake twice?

AIRASSAULT18B said:

Russel thanks for the quick response & photo fix. Now I know these are good so I will open & use. What did I do wrong in posting my pics so I will not make the same mistake twice?

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You're welcome.

Honestly, I don't know why the photos wouldn't post. I tried to do so, but came out with the same empty frames that are in your post #4, so I just posted hyperlinks.

Enjoy your new Eneloops!

Russ

AIRASSAULT18B said:

What did I do wrong in posting my pics so I will not make the same mistake twice?

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You tried to embed the pages containing the images, not the images themselves. When using ImageShack, next time simply click on the "embed thumbnails of this image" link on the right, copy the code in the box next to "Forum" and paste it into your post, which will result in something like this:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

(You can remove the "uploaded with" link at the end, of course)

Eismagier said:

You tried to embed the pages containing the images, not the images themselves. [...]

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Yep, that's what I did also.

Thanks for the info Eismagier!

AIRASSAULT18B said:

I have the same batteries with the same packaging from the same vendor as Russel. I called Sanyo & talked to a person who works in the battery dept. He stated the packaging was done by a third party & Sanyo has bought these from various sources to test & they were all genuine Eneloops. Each battery was taken apart to verify. He also said the phone & email is overloaded with people trying to contact them about this very issue. He went on to say as of 12/10 there are no longer vent holes. I told him it would save Sanyo & users time if they could put a picture & explain the new design with no vent holes on their website.

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This is quoted from the Colored Eneloop thread.

AIRASSAULT8B, thank you for going to the trouble of confirming the non-vented Eneloops are genuine!

No problem, its like some of these people refuse to believe even when you get the info from the source. They can go ahead a call Sanyo & talk to the CS line for 20 min while you try to get specifics about the changes to the product. Only to have her say I will have the Sanyo battery division engineer call you back. Now their on the other thread saying Sanyo ruined the batteries because they no longer have vents. Sanyo stated vents were not needed for the new design

AIRASSAULT18B said:

Is there still a problem with fake Eneloops? When I searched I found most of the complaints dated a few years ago & they were from Europe & the Pacific area. I live in North America. The eneloop AAs I ordered from Amazon came in four packs in a white cardboard backed package. I just ordered some more from Amazon listed by Thomas INC & they came in a shiny foil type package with a Sanyo hologram on the front with a crown on the upper right that has new in the middle of the crown. The main concern I have so far is there are no vents on or around the + terminal of the battery. What do you guys think?

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You have described the newest version Eneloops (packaging varies as always). They have the vent holes UNDER the film, round positive terminals and a slightly larger negative terminal. You can also verify that they are genuine and the new version by looking on the battery for the crown and the number HR-3UTGA.

thomas_rep said:

[...]They have the vent holes UNDER the film, round positive terminals and a slightly larger negative terminal. [...]

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OK, so it would be better, when describing 1500 cycle Eneloop AA cells, to say that they have hidden, or no visible vents. Thank you for that tid bit of information.

So far, I've been very impressed with the performance of these newer '1500 cycle' Eneloops. They seem to perform slightly better than the 1000 cycle Eneloop AA cells that I have, but that may be partially due to the fact that these are the freshest cells that I've received, judging by the code date.

Russel,
I contacted them so they could put the nonbelivers to bed. When I talked to Sanyo there was a language barrier but, I got that he wanted to get across that there was not the vent on the positive terminal like past designs so people just dont get fixated at looking for the vents then dismissing them as fakes because you dont see them. This is more for the people that are on the colored eneloops thread that question the integrity of the vendors on Amazon. We had already come to the conclusion Thomas is a established, respectable business & only the packaging & look (vents) were the issue that I had question about in the original post which of course is now been verified by Sanyo & Thomas.

AIRASSAULT18B, I appreciate your efforts at uncovering the truth.

We now know that the newer Eneloop cells have hidden vents.

I got the newest enelopp XX and it have vent holes, is this genuine as previuosly stated in this thread that new eneloops have no vent holes.

AIRASSAULT18B said:

I contacted them so they could put the nonbelivers to bed. When I talked to Sanyo there was a language barrier but, I got that he wanted to get across that there was not the vent on the positive terminal like past designs so people just dont get fixated at looking for the vents then dismissing them as fakes because you dont see them. This is more for the people that are on the colored eneloops thread that question the integrity of the vendors on Amazon. We had already come to the conclusion Thomas is a established, respectable business & only the packaging & look (vents) were the issue that I had question about in the original post which of course is now been verified by Sanyo & Thomas.

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My observation about this is that Sanyo has made a big marketing mistake. Wittingly, or unwittingly, Sanyo established a particular design in everyone's mind as a trademark of the Eneloop cell. When they then changed it, they confused everyone, as evidenced by the huge amount of discussion and number of questions generated. If Sanyo had been properly aware of this they would not have changed the design in the way that they did.

Russel said:

AIRASSAULT18B, I appreciate your efforts at uncovering the truth.

We now know that the newer Eneloop cells have hidden vents.

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I think they all have hidden vents, new and old.

Ian2381 said:

I got the newest enelopp XX and it have vent holes, is this genuine as previuosly stated in this thread that new eneloops have no vent holes.

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There hasn't been any reports of eneloop xx without vent holes. The no visible vent holes is for the newer regular (i.e., non-XX) eneloops.

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mellowman said:

I think they all have hidden vents, new and old.

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[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I'm not quite sure I understand you. [/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The 1000 cycle cells have openings ("vents") that are visible at the positive cell terminal. The newer 1500 cycle Eneloop cells don't have any visible openings, or vents. While the openings at the positive terminals of the 1000 cycle Eneloop cells are not the entire vent or vent mechanism, it is part of the vent system, thus making the vent or venting system visible. Even if the entire vent system is not. Although, it would be more accurate if I had said vent holes.[/FONT]

I believe they all have venting systems, new and old. The top beneath and around the positive terminal is permeable with vents underneath. The old you had visible vents holes on the positive terminal the newer 1500 cycle ones don't but they still have hidden vents just like the old ones.