I've Finished Up All My aa Battery Test, and the Results Are In!, 'The Good' 'The Bad' and 'The Average'

[MarkCZ]

I've finished up over 300 hours of double (aa) Alkaline battery test, and I've murdered over 140 batteries to get to the dirty truth about some of them.
Now, its my understanding that forum member "Monte" is also doing some run time test in different detectors that he's going to be adding to my test.
I didn't pull any favorites for the test, each battery had its own load, the battery drainers were assembled with as close to matching components as possible, to be as fair as possible.
The test covered some 36 different groups of batteries, ALL ALKALINE. Below is the link to the Findmall sub-forum the test is on. If you want to skip all the chatter and get to the
point and the results then just jump to page 4 or 5 of the topic , ALL Batteries, including load testing pictures, spreadsheet screen shots.
And I think Energizer is pulling a SCAM! what do you think??
Here is the link to the topic!

aa Battery's Race To 0.8v How Much Interest Is There?

I'm going to predict that Duracell Optimum is going to be our next king of the mountain.

www.findmall.com

 

[gabbyhayes]

What was the drain on the batteries in your tests?
Found it in your original thread....about 300ma.

 

[MarkCZ]

What was the drain on the batteries in your tests?
Found it in your original thread....about 300ma.

In Monte's detector run time test I don't think he tested that, but I did and
the 4.7ohm resistor as the load tested with a new Fresh battery @180-188ma
I started out with an 8.8ohm resistor but with that as the load the test was an unreasonable
length of time of 19+ hrs, and I felt that a 10-hr time frame would be closer to reasonable.

Thanks for your question

 

[gabbyhayes]

In Monte's detector run time test I don't think he tested that, but I did and
the 4.7ohm resistor as the load tested with a new Fresh battery @180-188ma
I started out with an 8.8ohm resistor but with that as the load the test was an unreasonable
length of time of 19+ hrs, and I felt that a 10-hr time frame would be closer to reasonable.

Thanks for your question

The current should have been just over 300ma. with a fresh set of batteries. According to ohms law I=E/R so 1.5/4.7 = .319

 

[gabbyhayes]

300 ma. is a very high drain for AA cells. Usually AA cells are used in devices that draw between 50 and 100ma.
I'm not sure what my ATpro draws but I think I often get about 30-40hrs hunting time on a fresh set of alkalines.
This takes into account that I usually only hunt for about 2 hrs. max. This gives the batteries some time to recover.
Your tests might yield vastly different results had you used say 15 or 30 ohm resistors. (100ma or 50 ma current drain)
Having said that your tests are very interesting and not what one would expect from the more expensive brands!!

 

[WaterWalker]

FYI, in my testing using Li-Ion batteries, I found the Excalibur 1000 draws about 55ma, the ATPro about 65ma and the ATX a whopping 185ma.
Detector settings including audio had very little affect on the current draw.

 

[gabbyhayes]

FYI, in my testing using Li-Ion batteries, I found the Excalibur 1000 draws about 55ma, the ATPro about 65ma and the ATX a whopping 185ma.
Detector settings including audio had very little affect on the current draw.

Thanx for that info. Its in the ballpark of what I'd expect.
I think headphones might decrease the drain by a small amount. Other than that I would agree that settings likely have very little effect on current consumption.
Pinpointing might draw an extra ma. or 2 but that's just a guess.

 

[miserman]

With over 4 hours difference between the Poland Energizer and the USA Energizer, yes Energizer has to know their foreign made batteries are far inferior to the USA made product. Couple this with the probability that the foreign made product is made with much cheaper labor, they have a real money maker there. Think about it, the "same" battery with much cheaper overhead and the consumer has to replace them twice as often. This is a scam and most people don't even know it. The USA made product is available but you have to hunt for it. This definitely will be a money saver for me. Thanks MarkCZ for your great job. Taking the time and effort for this experiment will be helpful too many.

 

[buggg]

Mark, thanks for doing the test, and sharing your results.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

I'm really surprised the ATX is only 185ma. The Whites TDI SL is close to 500ma. Both are PI's, and similar in performance.
Jim