Ansmann 2850 AA Cells Performance Results!

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

yes "Peoples Republic of China", though why they call it a republic is beyond me. lol Its also a designation for Military Radios, but I doubt thats the case for these batteries.

Sounds like these batteries are good quality but standard NiMh batteries. I've been turned off on buying anything from China when it comes to batteries, I'm tired of their false labelling and poor quality/performace.

But the Pirce of your Batteries are a little high, I looked around and they are $16 for a set of 4 you can get Eneloops for $3 so they are pretty overpriced if you ask me....

Though the High Capacity is a plus, but they sound a little picky if they are acting up in the charger, then it may be user error? If not then I would say the Batteries seem a little unstable to give that many problems while charging in a High quality charger like the BC900

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

firefly101 said:

yes "Peoples Republic of China", though why

Though the High Capacity is a plus, but they sound a little picky if they are acting up in the charger, then it may be user error? If not then I would say the Batteries seem a little unstable to give that many problems while charging in a High quality charger like the BC900

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Actually that problem got resolved. Haven't had that happen since then. I did not prime them properly out of the package because time was not on my side. More like Prime as you go lol.

Price is a little bit high but like you said the capacity is a plus lol. I do have 2 4pk of duraloops (white top) as a backup. But my primary set are these cells.

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

Well keep testing. But the price is a little high true?

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

Just a little considering at my local store wallgreens they were selling duraloops for 16 bucks!! now that's a rip off!!!:mad: First set of duraloops cost me 12 bucks and later went for the second set which i paid 16 bucks ouch!

Stay away from Safeway and Wallgreens when it comes to buying Batteries and chargers!!!:mad:

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

Buy on Ebay I got my Batteries for $14 for 8 Duraloops shipped.

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

firefly101 said:

Buy on Ebay I got my Batteries for $14 for 8 Duraloops shipped.

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Don't have an account with them. I don't want to create anymore accounts for now think I am set lol.

And also I only have 1 set of these hi cap since they do not like to be unused. That's what the duraloops are for. I do like the fact that duraloops can be treated like primary batteries which is a ++. Its good to know that I have backup power when I am in a bind.

My duraloops are for "oh crap I forgot to charge my Ansmann cells and I don't have time to charge" lol.

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

OT, but are your Duraloops MIJ? There were white top MIC.

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

Marduke said:

OT, but are your Duraloops MIJ? There were white top MIC.

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My 2x4 Sets of white top Duraloops are MIJ Good thing i got the last 2 because I went back to the same place where I bought them. They are now carrying the black tops.

This is getting confusing :confused:

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

Keep testing these Batteries, it would be good to know what capacity they have after 50-100 cycles. Also have you tried them in a freezer? lol

MIJ Duraloops are hard to find, shame you dont have an Ebay account its well worth it. When I first signed up I didnt have a need either until I started to find all these deals. Its the same with your first car, you really didnt have a need until you bought one then you can live without it. lol

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

I don't know if that's a good idea to put these cells in a freezer. What would be the benefit here?

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

it wont hurt them but you can see how they compare to the eneloops in the device. Like the review done by egsis

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

I suppose I can try. What would I be looking for If I put them in a freezer?

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

MarioJP said:

I suppose I can try. What would I be looking for If I put them in a freezer?

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If you have flashlight with a fairly aggressive draw, you could freeze both Ansmann and Duraloop cells and then compare their respective run times directly out of the freezer.

Depending on where you are in the world, knowing which performs better in cold weather could be personally beneficial.

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

I live In California and I do not have a flashlight that draws alot of current. The only flashlight I have is a 2 LED flashlight which barely puts a drain on the 2 AA cells.

Re: Ansmann 2850 AA Cells First Look!

How about doing another test with the cells to see what the capacity is now.

TakeTheActive said:

MH-C9000 'rests' (1 or 2 hours, depending on the FUNCTION) between the CHARGE stage and the DISCHARGE stage, which allows the 'Surface Charge' to 'bleed off', leaving you with the actual capacity available to your devices. Sure, if you take your cells "HOT off the Charger" and begin using them, you'll be able to take advantage of that extra ~5-10%. But, in an hour or so, it's lost.

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Actually depending on usage and how much the device discharge rate that these cells are being used in can make a difference. When new you kind of have to break them in to obtain close to advertised capacity. Not talking right off the charger either. I had these cells sitting around for days to almost a week and was able to get discharge reading of 2625. One time all of the cells achieved 2700 after 3 days sitting.

The only downside to these cells is they can be fragile on HIGH DISCHARGE RATE which took me by surprise.

I say this because I use these cells in a mobile usb charger to charge my smartphone. When I upgraded from my blackberry curve to the new bold 9700. Before it was drawing about 800-900mAh on my curve.

the new bold. Boy did the discharge rate skyrocket. It is now drawing 1.8A continuous discharge rate.

I am finding out these cells can't handle at a discharge rate that high. And the side effects are showing big time. They now have develop high self discharge rate. Just 2 days sitting there 50% of its capacity is lost. Also the voltage under load is way too low that i am having difficult time charging my bold. In fact the batteries inside the usb mobile charger gets way too hot almost to 100F while charging my bold 9700.

To confirm this I decided to charge these cells up and do a 500ma discharge rate.

Voltage readings are not good. After 30-60min voltages on all four cells are reading below 1.2V one cell reads 1.15V. Another thing I noticed is the popping sounds of these cells are getting quite frequent when charging, even at a slow charging rate. And it started to happen more often the moment I started to charge my bold with these cells.

Conclusion. These ansmann 2850 are excellent for charging my blackberry curve 8310. But took a serious beating trying to charge my bold 9700. Surprised that my mobile usb charger handled the bold. Too bad the 4 cells in it did not survive the torture unfortunately.

I don't want to charge these cells anymore, as it keeps popping too much.

These cells are now ruined and was not cheap :(







Tests after the torture after 3 days sitting there. All 4 cells report back 1800 but 1 out of 4 cells reports 1723. So this made me to believe that not only are the cells is losing retention, also the voltage output during discharge is getting lower and lower.

at 500mA discharge after 3 days sitting there Voltages on all 4 cells reads from 1.12v-1.05. One cell was at 1V from the start. and stays there until cell is nearing end of discharge and that's when the voltage further drops.

Keep in mind this is at 500mA discharge (since my Lacrosse is limited to 500mAh discharge rate). My USB mobile charger draws almost 4x more and that's quite a heavy drain especially when it has to be constant for an hour or 2.

So for future reference on how battery manufacture states "designed for high drain devices" wish it is stated a bit more realistic. Like for short burst drains I can understand that these cells can handle that.

But for a constant drain of 1.8A that's just too much.

I don't understand. Everything was fine until I got my bold. Now I am debating if I should recycle these cells as they are no longer reliable with a high self discharge. :(


so the looks of this. Looks like NiMh does not like to be discharge at a high rate as the how many cycles can be recharged goes down with it by tenfold on a single high constant discharge cycle. Repeat this process 5-10 times they will become crap. This is far worst than overcharging.

Sorry about your cells. But as a general rule of thumb it goes like this:

Low capacity cells <=> High drain devices

High capacity cells <=> Low drain devices

For the highest draining devices like hot-wired lights or RC cars special cells of 1600 mAh capacity are used. For ordinary high drain devices like your USB charger, Eneloops would be satisfactory.

High capacity cells of 2700 mAh are very fragile inside and must be treated with the utmost care. Even so, they can fail quite soon in spite of gentle use.

I guess this is where the new Ni-Zn can come in handy. These cells can give a quite a punch without getting warm at all.

Though I do have 8pk of brand new duraloops that were only used couple of times but since been stored away.

I was not going to use these cells until situations like this happens. Interesting about my usb charger is that it uses 4AA cells but it is paired into 2. You could say that this usb charger has 2 dedicated charging circuit per pair. Its combo of series and parallel.


Series of 2x2=2x 3V in Parallel. This is my usb mobile charger

http://www.tekkeon.com/products-tekcharge1550.html

A little OT, but Ansmann also make "Ansmann racing" 2400mAh AA cells for high drain RC use. I wonder how those would compare?

MarioJP said:

....Interesting about my usb charger is that it uses 4AA cells but it is paired into 2. You could say that this usb charger has 2 dedicated charging circuit per pair. Its combo of series and parallel.

Earlier Quote:

I say this because I use these cells in a mobile usb charger to charge my smartphone. When I upgraded from my blackberry curve to the new bold 9700. Before it was drawing about 800-900mAh on my curve.

The new bold. Boy did the discharge rate skyrocket. It is now drawing 1.8A continuous discharge rate.
​

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what the Blackberry power/current draw is but the limit on a USB port is about 500mA or about 2.5 Watt. For your USB mobile charger to generate this same power output (i.e. 2.5W) from the batteries providing 1.8A it would require about 1.4V (2.5W/1.8A). That works out to 4 batteries wired in parallel for a capacity increase of 4x but at the same voltage as a single battery. This of course assume a 100% efficient voltage up-converter.

Accounting for losses:
If the USB mobile charger has losses (say 50%), then the same power output of 2.5 W could be achieved from a configuration consisting the 2 batteries wired in parallel (for capacity to), to form a pack, that is then wire in series with another pack to double the voltage and make up for the loss. Result is 5W draw from batteries for 2.5W out.

If I alter my assumption that a modern up-converter is nearlly 100% efficient, then the output would be 5W and the Blackerry 9700 would be consuming 1 amp and violating the USB port power spec...??? How did you measure the 1.8A battery consumption rate of your Mobile USB Charger ?