Thanks Rimbo! I’d often wondered if the faster recharging units somehow degraded performance.
You make it sound as if the general public is simply too stupid to be given them.[/quote]
Pretty much. The average consumer can hardly be bothered with the difference between NiCD and NiMH, let alone throwing LiOn’s in the mix. Hell, my friend’s father popped some batteries and a charger by throwing regular alkalines into a high-speed NiMH charger.
Great information site on batteries.
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone.htm
Everything you wanted to know, and more!
Edit: Here’s a site that has a bunch of different battery brands rated
There are three main things which kill NiMH batteries.
-
Impact. Don’t drop them too much.
-
Heat. Don’t charge them too fast. Anything less than 3 hours is bad. Anything less than 1 hour is very bad. Some batteries are made to be more proof against this sort of abuse.
-
Overcharging. Don’t charge them too long.
3 is the big one. Many NiMH chargers do not use -dV detection to switch to a trickle when the batteries are full. They just keep pumping the current in and the batteries just wilt under the power. NiCd batteries are more rugged, which is why they didn’t have quite as much of a problem with this sort of treatment. NiMH cells also lose their charge within a couple of months. Again, NiCds perform better here. Also, no consumer battery has a memory effect. Almost all of the time, re-conditioning gear, deep cycling, etc. is of no real use.
As everyone else has said, the charger is the important part. Get a good charger, buy new batteries every 3 years, and you’re set.
Note that there ARE rechargeable NiMH battery/charger combo packs out there claiming 15-minute recharge times. AFAICT, they do this by incorporating charge-control-circuitry into the batteries to regulate the power throughput, as well as massive heatsinks and fans built into the charger to dissipate the heat. I’m not sure how well these work compared to traditional NiMH’s though, in practical usage and efficiency.