Come to think of it, that battery had a slightly rusty bottom casing. I'd cleaned it previously, a few charges ago. Might be worthwhile closely inspecting all the older batteries and cleaning the charger contacts, as you suggest.
I looked a month or so ago, capacities started from 0.6Ah.
There's no risk of battery explosion. But also not much market for slow chargers any more.
NT
We have only been back in this country since Nov. 2010, so all of our rechargeables were purchased since then. Most likely they date from mid-2011 at the earliest, some later than that.
The 'poundshop' (LSD) rechargeable cells are made to a price: >1Ah for AA and a warm-fart's worth for AAA.
The very first set of AA NiCads I bought (for a Kovac calculator) were 500mAH capacity and I think this was a 10% improvement on the previous 450mAH generation of AAs that I had lying around.
True enough for AA sized NiCad and NiMh cells. They just tend to overheat and vent off the excess hydrogen/oxygen when the safety seals open up due to the excess pressure.
Pound shops aren't a very good source for rechargables. Aldi and Lidl are better sources for such batteries. However, when it comes to cheap carbon zinc primary cells (particularly the 16 x AA cell packs), they offer the 'best bang for your buck' (and likewise for the alkaline cells - this type are horrendously expensive elsewhere).
My local pound shop has PP3 carbon by Panasonic at a quid each. Didn't think that good value.
It isn't! My local pound shops sell zinc carbon PP3s in packs of three (just handy for making up a 27v door bell battery pack - replaces a 24 volt 16 AA cell battery pack holder(2 x 8 AA cell holders stuck back to back) that I'd previously used for a decade or so).
Up until 2 or 3 years ago, it was possible to by alkaline PP3s in packs of two. Now they're only available as a one off item in the pound shops.
Tesco own brand NiMH are OK, probably not as cheap as Aldi/Lidl but the price certainly isn't "how much...!". Tesco normally have them in stock as well ...
With respect this is rather unrealistic. Any dumb charger in the real world is designed such that that never happens. The unavoidable consequence is that charging is a good bit slower than an intelligent charger.
NT
Are they selling the low self discharge types?
A few years ago, just after I'd bought a Canon PS A720 IS from Jessops mail order with a 25 quid off coupon, I paid their shop a visit and noticed that all the AA rechargables they had on the shelves were just the ordinary high self discharge rate types (and over priced at that!).
I was rather surprised at this seeming total lack of awareness of the Sanyo Eneloop batteries which had been on the market for several years by then. I thought that if anyone would be stocking the Eneloops, it would be a photographic shop since it's such a 'no-brainer' match to the digital P&S camera usage pattern. I'm not surprised that Jessops went out of business not long after with such a lack of interest in their customers' needs.
In the end, I landed up buying the Uniross Hybrio LSD cells from my local Wilkinsons store (the only brand of LSD NiMH AA cells readily available in the UK at that time). They cost £6.49 for a pack of four which was considerably cheaper than the Argos price point of £9.99.
I think I paid £4.49 for four AA Tronic 'ready to use' 2300mAH cells in Aldi a few years ago and about the same more recently for the Activ branded versions that came on sale in Aldi about a year back.
I've now got a more than ample stock of rechargable AAs for that A720 IS camera . The Superzoom bridge camera, a Canon SX40 HS, uses a proprietry 7.4v 920mAH (2 cell) Li-ion battery which precludes the need to add any more AA cells to my stockpile.
I simply bought a cheap compatable Li-ion battery for a tenner from play.com to use as a spare battery to cover a day's worth of heavy 'tourist' usage and this worked out just fine (I averaged 485 photos a day(plus some movie footage) on a 14 day cruise to Norway nearly 2 years ago with one day's shooting total peaking at 1578!).
The battery charger supplied with the SX40 HS only takes about 2 hours to fully recharge each of these batteries ready for another day's "Shoot" so owning just that one additional battery fulfils my needs quite nicely.
Ignoring the issue of 'contact resistance', a pair of 2100mAH LSD NiMH cells stores about 5WH, the smaller in volume (and lighter in weight) Li-ion battery stores just under 7WH. Although a replacement set of AAs is far cheaper than the Li-ion battery (even at the bargain price of £9.99 - I've seen the 'genuine Canon article' priced at £23 and even higher), the much better battery contact quality(gold plated contacts) provides a more consistent result which, at the 10 quid mark, justifies the higher price (especially so when I only need to carry a single additional spare in the bag and the low battery warning actually _does_ mean 'low battery' as opposed to low voltage because it's either low battery _or_ high contact resistance in the case of AA cell powered kit).
I suspect the two cameras have about the same power consumption so the 3 fold battery voltage increase of the Li-ion battery over the 2 cell NiMH battery reduces the current to one third and the contacts to two versus four which considerably reduces contact resistance problems greatly assisted by the use of gold plated contacts (where the higher price of the Li-ion battery can more easily absorb the extra cost of such a 'luxury feature').
I'm no fan of 'proprietry' battery formats but, in this case, it would seem to be a justified practice. However, even better would be kit designed to run off a single 3.7v Li-ion cell such as the type used in laptop battery packs (18650C4B 2000mAH) since they could be mass produced for such use and you'd only be throwing a battery away for the sake of just the one and only cell failure at end of life instead of a set of 2 or 3 or even 4 out of which only one of the cells has to suffer premature failure to render the other cell or three unusable.
The other advantage of single cell 'batteries' is that you can pack that bit more WH energy capacity into a given battery volume compared to a multi-celled battery and no need for individual cell health monitoring and control circuitry to be integrated into the battery itself. The monitoring can be done by the battery management circuitry in the portable 'gadget' itself (as must be the case for most mobile phones) which reduces 'battery' manufacturing costs to a minimum.
Taking a quick look at the wiki article on Li-ion battery technology suggests it'll be quite a few years yet before the classic AA NiMH cell is consigned to the pages of history so the situation in regard to reliable and effective AA Battery Chargers seems set to remain pertinent for the foreseeable future.
IME, the issue of contact resistance is a significant factor that afflicts AA chargers and the AA powered kit alike. Care has to be taken to maintain these contacts in a clean state to get the best out these batteries in regard to their charging and use. Even a high quality charger will suffer degraded performance from bad contact syndrome.
All I can tell you about AA chargers is that there is a very wide range available starting from 'cheap and cheerful' all the way up to very expensive units that can not only charge each of from 4 to 8 cells individually but also log the AH both into and out of each cell.
These expensive chargers are useful if you're in charge of a sizeable herd of AA cells and you're trying to keep track of the performance of each individual cell, usually with an eye to making sure to use them in matched pairs, triplets or quads as well as deciding when they're past their best and in need of being culled from the herd.
I suspect the OP's needs lie somewhere between 'cheap and cheerful' and 'Bloody damn expensive' so I can only recommend that he googles for more info on the subject of AA chargers before choosing one.
I've given up getting most alkaline cells/batteries from such places. The PP3s lately have tended to be dead out of the pack and 2 or 3 years inside their date and the cells have lasted about the same as length of time as a politician's promise. The Kodak ones from Poundland(?) are relatively expensive but goos and the best value seem to be Ikea's at £1.50/10.
You were done! 2000mAH is has been the norm for low grade AAs for ages! Even the ones that Maplin sell are at elast 2000mAh and above.
NB they will rip you off the same amount for 2000mAh or 2400mAh cells. Also that their C cells are often just padded out AA cells.
Get some half decent Tronic ones from Lidl/Aldi (can never remember which) - they have low self discharge and are available in every size (though they sometimes offer ordinary basic NiMH ones too).
The low self discharge ones are a real bargain.
Not at all. The trade is between a slow charge that is always safe and a medium charge rate that isn't. A lot of the cheap and nasty dumb chargers use the latter as their charging strategy.
They go with a reasonable pop if they decide to go. It is the chargers that say charge from flat for X hours that are the problem. At about X+24 the battery has had enough and will make its displeasure felt.
Explosion is a bit too strong for it but a decent loud report will be heard and hot caustic mist may escape when the safety seal blows.
A manufacturer/ UK seller that does that is asking to land in the small claims court
NT
I don't think they are but my use of them has them fully cycled every
3 to 4 days so LSD isn't much of a concern. B-)The point is Tesco normally have stock I haven't seen the LSD batteries in Aldi for an long time and there isn't a convient Lidl.
These are all Duracells, some sold with the Duracell charger that just died and prompted this thread, and as I said, since 2011.
And as for Aldi/Lidl, they haven't yet penetrated to this corner of our green and pleasant land. Besides, I would rather buy from a British retailer than a foreign one.
Hmmm. You seem to be right! Duracell do offer some 1300mA AA low self discharge that play on gullible consumers belief in the brand name.
They also make decent capacity ones as well eg.
Your choice of course. Willing seller willing buyer.
Perhaps it's in their interest that rechargables don't seem as good as disposables?
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