While hunting around for new batteries I noticed there’s a lot of Lithium Ion rechargeable AA/AAA batteries that claim to operate at 1.5V, have higher capacities than NiMH and more charge cycles so should last longer. Some of the AA’s even have USB-C ports on the battery themselves for easy recharging which is cool!
Here’s a good review of these 1.5V lithium rechargeable AA batteries:
Sounds great to me, but how much capacity do these things really have and how much do they cost? While browsing YouTube - btw I hate how YouTube is the source of info for all this stuff now, RIP the WWW - I found a bloke who did some quality capacity tests of a range of common AA rechargeable batteries:
And he also published them on the web!
https://aob.spukhafte.net/scoreboard
Going by On the Fritz’s capacity tests, IKEA’s LADDA batteries are still extremley good value for money.
- IKEA LADDA 2450mAh AA - 1.91Wh @ 1A load and cost $3 ea ($1.57/Wh)
- EBL 3000mWh AA - 2.63Wh @ 1A load and cost $7 ea ($2.66/Wh)
- XTAR 4150mWh AA - 2.82Wh @ 1A load and cost $7.73 ea ($2.75/Wh)
That doesn’t even take into account the cost of a new charger that supports 1.5V Lithium rechargeables, usually the same one that comes with the batteries due to the unique charging profiles of these types of batteries.
Even when comparing other NiMH batteries to each other, the IKEA LADDA are just too good on a price to capacity ratio. EBL’s AA NiMH batteries are very popular on Amazon, but at $4.12 each compared to $3 each for the LADDA, the LADDA is superior as it’s unlikely the EBLs have more capacity. At best they have the same (1.9Wh - 2.1Wh) but cost more. Ditto brands like Energizer, Eneloop, Duracell and so on that all cost more than IKEA’s.
If you can find a AA rechargeable battery cheaper than IKEA’s LADDA, chances are it won’t be much cheaper per battery and there’s an even higher chance it’ll have crappier capacity so per watt hour will be more expensive. Maybe there’s a hidden AA rechargeable gem on Aliexpress I don’t know about?
I could see the 1.5V lithium rechargeables being useful if you really do need 1.5V constant output or are changing batteries so frequently (high drain devices like camera flashes), but I think for my uses I’m gonna keep going with the IKEA batteries. The value is just too good and I know they’re going to be genuine because IKEA’s supply chain is way better than Aliexpress or Amazon.