XTAR Improved The Rechargeable 1.5V Lithium-ion Batteries

Nowadays, more and more people accept the rechargeable 1.5V Lithium-ion battery. Compared with the single-use battery, it is lighter in weight, provides high constant voltage, can be quickly charged and work a long time.

What’s the advantage of rechargeable 1.5V Lithium-Ion battery?

We all know that the most important aspects for a battery is the battery capacity and drain. A lot of tests show that the single-use Alkaline batteries are almost twice the running time than these rechargeable lithiums. But for high-drain devices, such as the 9 AA high lumen count flashlight, these are far superior by how much longer they last in contrast to both the alkalines and the NiMH rechargeables, and by a pretty significant margin – could last around 30% longer than Alkalines.

Not to say they’re absolutely bad for lower discharge applications like a remote control or a PC mouse, but they are better suited for medium and high drain. These rechargeable 1.5V batteries always come in handy and quick to charge. And you can get around 1,000 times of fully charging cycles.

All those help offset the cost of the brand new rechargeable 1.5V lithium-ion batteries. This means: big overall money saving.

What’s the downside of the rechargeable 1.5V lithium-ion battery?

First I’d like to share my own experience about this battery. I use a motion sensor which opens when your hand near it, and it runs on 6 AA batteries. It is a device that eats batteries. I would go through batteries every 1.5 months, and it seemed like a real waste to me. The rechargeable 1.5V AA batteries lasted one month and 10 days before needing recharged. When the batteries go dead they charge up in an hour or two, a very short waiting time! So, it is a big money-saving way for me. But the one big difference I noticed was these batteries worked strong right up to the point they were dead and could no longer open the lid.

That’s the downside of this battery. It always keep the constant voltage output, so your device can’t judge the power status from the voltage curve. You may find the device suddenly doesn’t work without warning.

What If the rechargeable 1.5V lithium-ion battery with power indicator?

Recently, XTAR, the well-known manufacturer in Li-ion batteries and chargers, released an upgraded version of the rechargeable 1.5V lithium-ion batteries. It has a built-in voltage control IC, when the battery is about to run out, the voltage will slowly drop, and stop output when it reaches 1.1V. The voltage degrading operation gave plenty of warning the batteries will go dead.

This improvement make a big sense for the electric devices which have the function of low power warning, such as the smart door lock. It perfectly solve the downside of this rechargeable 1.5V Lithium cells.

1.2V NiMH or rechargeable 1.5V AA, which one is better for camera flashes?

We can use the rechargeable 1.5V lithium-ion batteries to replace the required Alkaline or NiMH AA batteries for most devices, except for the camera flashes. There’s a lot of debate about which battery is better to use on a camera flash.

In fact, the best batteries for camera flashes are the 1.2V NiMH AA. The following we explain the reason.

Recycle time is important for speedlight. While, the two types of batteries has a big difference on this aspect.

The instantaneous current of the speedlight is more than 20A, so its recycle speed needs high current. But these rechargeable 1.5V lithium cells contain protection to limit the maximum current for safety reasons (heat). So first, the lithium flash recycle times are longer than any other NiMH batteries, which is a biggie when waiting for the next shot. NiMH batteries provide fastest recycle, because of lower internal resistance.

Second, high current is why the battery get hot. Be very aware of heating conditions that fast shooting speed makes it worse. If shooting rapid flash shots, the lithiums can get especially hot, especially fast, and could damage the flash.

So a good quality NiMH AA battery is better for the camera flash. It makes the best balance of flash times and recycle speed.

Conclusion

If you have some high-drain devices, like the trail camera that use 8 AA batteries, Micro cube guitar amplifier with at least 6 AA batteries, smart door lock with 4 AA batteries, etc, the rechargeable 1.5V Lithium-ion batteries with indicator are a good choice. The high recycle life, fast charge speed and high drain will offset its high cost. And the price is not so expensive as we imagine. It’s only $25 for 4 AA batteries plus one charger.