****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Since joining Costco I have always used their Kirkland hearing aid batteries and have been happy with the convenience and the life of the batteries. But since encountering the new, government mandated child-proof (and senior-resistant) packaging of Kirkland batteries, I started shopping around and found I was able to buy genuine RayOVac batteries online from Wholesalehome that were still supplied in the old, user-friendly packaging. I bought a package of 60 in September, 2024 that were listed on Amazon as RayOVac Extra, and that is what arrived, in people-friendly 6-packs. I ordered 120 more in January, 2025, also from Wholesalehome, and on arrival these were also RayOVac Extras, now in 8-packs that were also people friendly. Perhaps importantly, in both cases the packaging says "Made in the UK".Today, February 8, I note that batteries are still available from Wholesalehome, and while the poor quality picture of the product on Amazon looks like it could be RayOVac packaging, the name RayOVac does not actually appear on the pictured product, nor anywhere in the product information, and the batteries are now listed as "Wholesalehome" batteries.I note that the hearing aid battery market seems to be rather fluid at the moment. The product page of the batteries I bought both in September and January from Wholesalehome showed RayOVac packaging that did not say "Child-proof", and while some very recent reviews on the Wholesalehome product page do specifically mention "ease of removal", others, posted just as recently, complain of the difficult, child-proof packaging. So, based on these recent mixed reviews, it seems not clear which packaging version you will receive if you order now, and there is no help from the product page either, since it doesn't even show a picture of the full product. In contrast, the RayOVac storefront on Amazon clearly shows the battery packaging being labelled "child-proof", so presumably this is what you will get if you order your RayOVac batteries directly from their Amazon storefront. It's all very confusing.Like many, I bristled at this childproof packaging when I first encountered it, and the result of my first frustrating efforts to pull out two new batteries was a little pile of batteries and small shreds of cardboard and plastic (first picture). Viewing the manufacturer's advice on how to open this new packaging does make the process easier, but it still makes a mess and requires some wrist strength and dealing with a sharp scissors, and I just wonder how a senior citizen with arthritis, for example, would fare with this packaging. On the surface, the packaging is ludicrous, really. Mandated to introduce a child proof package, they simply retained the overall "lazy susan with porthole" design, but in the child-proof version the lazy susan doesn't turn, and there is no porthole. It's like designing a robot starting with the human form (here's looking at you, Robbie) versus starting with a requirement to optimize function and performance. This seems to currently be the industry-wide solution to providing a child-proof dispenser. I have to assume that no one anticipated this requirement for child-proof packaging, and so the quick-fix was to modify the already existing packaging equipment. Otherwise, the design makes no sense.We can only hope that somewhere in the business world, clever minds are at work at this problem and a year from now a truly child-resistant, but also senior-friendly, packaging will emerge. In the meantime, I hope the 180 batteries in user friendly packs that I just purchased will last me. Otherwise, when they are all gone, if the current child-proof packaging is still the state-of-the-art, I will have to do what I did when I first encountered it: cut up the 8-pack in one go and put all the batteries in a handy, senior-friendly jar (second picture). (And of course keep that jar away from any children.)In the meantime, if senior-friendly packaging of RayOVac batteries can still be confidently ordered, it is fair to ask how much of a premium one is paying for this feature, all other things being equal. I paid significantly more per battery for these bulk RayOVac batteries from Wholesalehome compared with the Kirkland batteries purchased at the Costco warehouse (37 cents per battery, RayOVac, versus 17 cents per battery for Kirkland). The real question, however, is how much one is actually paying per hour of battery life. To address this, I conducted a real world study, and found that in fact the RayOVacs do last significantly longer than the Kirklands. But not enough to formally make up for the higher price. So if you are focused on minimizing the cost per hour of battery life (and you are a Costco member), you might favor the Kirkland ones.Details: In my study, I removed the tabs and let the battery sit for a minute or so, as suggested, before inserting them in the hearing aid. I did not disconnect my hearing aids from the Bluetooth connection to my mobile phone, but I did rigorously avoid using the bluetooth connection over the course of the study: no listening to music through my hearing aids, no phone calls mediated by my hearing aids, etc. I timed each day's use and marked the end of useful life as the time at which I got the first "dying battery" indicator tone. Here are the results: the RayOVac batteries lasted about 80 hours, while the Kirkland batteries lasted about 60 hours. More specifically, over a total of 5 tests, the Kirklands had a mean life of 61.1 hours, plus or minus 3.6 hours. Over 4 tests, the RayOVacs had a mean life of 79.9 hours, plus or minus 1.0 hours. Note the significant difference in standard deviation - clearly the RayOVac manufacturing process, and/or quality control, is far superior to that associated with the Kirkland batteries.I should mention that the Kirkland batteries do have one feature that is more user-friendly than RayOVac, and that is the length of the tab. The tab on the RayOVac is so short that it is a challenge to grip it to pull it off the battery. The Kirkland tab - on both the original as well as the new, child-proof version - is longer and much easier to manage. Meanwhile, the child-proof packaging shown for RayOVac batteries, on the RayOVac storefront on Amazon, still shows the same, short tabs.So, in conclusion, in a new world where all battery retailers in the US provide only the same incredibly inconvenient child-resistant packaging, the Kirklands will end up being somewhat more convenient than RayOVacs - because of the tab lengths - and can also be counted on to provide more battery life per dollar, albeit with more variable lifetimes.
