Battery Showdown — The Best AA Battery You Can Buy?
A battery is a battery, right? Well, taking a look at this meticulous AA Battery Showdown from BitBox in the UK, it is clear that there is a tremendous variability in power and battery life depending on the quality of construction and a number of other factors, but plotting cost against performance offers unexpected results.
And also take a look at the great resources Adafruit offers to help you to learn about batteries and how they function — to help you choose the right type of battery for your projects.
We decided to test alkaline, lithium and zinc-chloride cells to find the best AA batteries you can buy for your money on the highstreet and online. As far as we are aware, this is the largest scale discharge test of consumer batteries that has been performed. The results surprised us a lot.
We are presenting a factual survey of batteries. The selection of batteries is not exhaustive and we have not deliberately included or excluded any brands or manufacturers. We are not recommending any manufacturer or brand based on these results and leave this up to the reader to decide which batteries to buy.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
The current issue of Consumer Reports has an analysis of batteries too. Their data is presented in terms of capacity and price but the numbers are largely in line with the results listed above. Consumer Reports’ article covers common brands in the US.
For home use, I tend to buy Kirkland (Costco) or Rayovac AA batteries. On trips with my camera, I pay a premium for higher capacity batteries to reduce the number of spares carried. At home the camera, motorized devices and handie-talkie radios get NiMH rechargeables.
Excellent!
Not too surprising… nice to know that those costco specials that I’ve been buying in large quantity over the years have been a good deal… 😀
The current issue of Consumer Reports has an analysis of batteries too. Their data is presented in terms of capacity and price but the numbers are largely in line with the results listed above. Consumer Reports’ article covers common brands in the US.
For home use, I tend to buy Kirkland (Costco) or Rayovac AA batteries. On trips with my camera, I pay a premium for higher capacity batteries to reduce the number of spares carried. At home the camera, motorized devices and handie-talkie radios get NiMH rechargeables.
This is really useful stuff to know! Thank you for posting it!
See also the “xxx Shootout” measurements at CandlePower forums.
Their AA Alkaline thread dates back to 2004.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?133440-Flashlight-Electronics-Batteries-Included-Threads-of-Interest
Can we get them to open source there battery tester? Do you know of an open alternatives? Great find!
I haven’t heard of half of these batteries. How does Rayovac match up in the graph?
I use Lithium rechargeable batteries in my camera because you can put brand new batteries in my Canon camera and it will say “battery low”.