****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Right off the bat these batteries excelled in reaching their capacity in one shot, here are the stats for the cells (tested them in both the La Crosse and Maha C9000)Discharge 300mAh: Maha C9000Batt 5 - 872mAh / 3:12Batt 6 - 875mAh / 3:14Batt 7 - 875mAh / 3:13Batt 8 - 865mAh / 3:10Discharge - 250mAh: La Crosse BC-1000Batt 1 - 896mAh / 3:36Batt 2 - 904mAh / 3:38Batt 3 - 913mAh / 3:40Batt 4 - 907mAh / 3:39Both sets seem to do well, though the Maha seemed to be pushing the cells in the 1.1 volt range instead of the 1.2 range. I have yet to determine whether 300mA discharge was too much or they were not completely charged, though they should have been charged (see my review on the Maha charger for more details). I often hear people are not getting fully charged (or drained cells) and i wanted to clarify a few reasons why that might be. EIther you are using it in a device that does not work well with NiMH rechargeables or the cells are over a year old and may need a refresh before using.Which brings me to my next point, these cells were manufactured in January of 2014 and (well you can see when i wrote this) it's now 2015. So naturally i am guessing the reason the extra 50mA current pushed the cells voltage further down with the Maha charger (since the La Crosse was fixed at 250mA discharge from choosing 500mA as the charging rate on both chargers). So while these cells are precharged, they are generally only charged to about 70% and after being a year or so in storage they start to lose their vibrancy and often times a simple charge, discharge and recharge is in order. Certainly you can use these cells out of the package and they should work fine, however the older the cells are the less charge they will have in them during obtaining them.I am also glad to see that the package these cells came in was in good condition. There's been a few folks out there (including me) who has got Eneloops that has escaped out of the package either during shipping or they were shipped in that condition. It's not good for cells to be out of the package and can cause the batteries to short circuit depleting their life. There are other factors that could reduce the charge levels by environmental factors during the production to when they get to your home and with a few folks that have done tests, these batteries can be low as 40%. My particular cells seemed to be around 65% capacity. So even though these cells have been labeled as precharged, the capacity is not generally at 100% capacity and functioning 100% right from the package. These batteries do hold their charge for a long time and i wouldn't expect them to die at 3 years in storage. They may not have as much capacity as those HSD cells but often times you are sacrificing cycles for extra capacity.These cells (both AA/AAA's) offer the best of both worlds. I use these for emergencies when my regular Eneloops are discharged and i got no alkalines available. One thing i will note if you use these cells 3x out of the week (that's discharging and recharging) you can probably get 4-5 years out of them. You can get more cycles out of them if you recharge them at 1.26 volts instead of 1.20 volts. So if you use these in regular applications you may want to think about recharging them on a regular basis (depending on how much you use them) and for low drain devices, regular Eneloops would be a far better idea. I use my older cells for low drain devices so my newer regular Eneloops gets used in the high drain devices. But if you are light with these you should get 5+ years out of them. As i stated earlier, i prefer using regular Eneloops for daily usage as those cells will outlast these, but for high drain critical applications these cells (both the AA/AAA) are excellent.Also if you see rechargeable AA Duracells with the mAh capacity of 2400, those are similar (or the same) as the AA Eneloop Pros.
