[The Jannie]

Not much help to those outside the UK, I'm afraid, but I found AA Eneloop clones at my local Lidl yesterday. Red cells in a blue and grey striped display card, £2.99 for four. I had to read the small print before I realised they were precharged, low drain, 2100mAh and not just the ordinary ones they've had in the past.

[UnknownVT]

Not much help to those outside the UK, I'm afraid, but I found AA Eneloop clones at my local Lidl yesterday. Red cells in a blue and grey striped display card, £2.99 for four. I had to read the small print before I realised they were precharged, low drain, 2100mAh and not just the ordinary ones they've had in the past.

Sorry to seem pedantic -

Are you using "eneloop" (a brand name)
as a generic term for LSD - Low self-discharge NiMH batteries ?
or
did you mean those Lidl are actually eneloops re-badged?

If the latter, how did you identify them as such, please? Thanks.

FWIW - web searching turned up this review over at CPF -
Lidl red Tronic battery test

From that thread those do not seem like re-badged eneloops.

[The Jannie]

Sorry if I caused confusion, I didn't mean rebadged Eneloops, just pre-charged, low self-discharge cells. Thank you for the link to an interesting discussion. I'll see how they go but at the price I won't be complaining too much. That discussion was just like being on this Pentax forum. Everyone writes about batteries then some smartalec decides to complain about another's punctuation!

[UnknownVT]

Sorry if I caused confusion, I didn't mean rebadged Eneloops, just pre-charged, low self-discharge cells. Thank you for the link to an interesting discussion. I'll see how they go but at the price I won't be complaining too much. That discussion was just like being on this Pentax forum. Everyone writes about batteries then some smartalec decides to complain about another's punctuation!

Thank you for the clarification - I am always looking for re-badged eneloops - hopefully for better pricing.

However almost all LSD "Pre-Charged" NiMH batteries from reputable makers seem to do just fine in Pentax dSLRs
- so you do have a good buy.

eneloops do have a slight advantage of maintaining higher operating voltage under load than others - but this only really manifests itself after about 3 months from charge.

FWIW - If you can bear reading another thread -
here's the test that revealed this aspect -
eneloop vs. Kodak Pre-Charged Voltage Maintenance
to save you the agony of wading through the long thread the summary is in Post #57
and some of the posts beyond that may be worth reading as they specifically cite the Pentax K100D -
Kodak Pre-Charged are strongly suspected of being re-badge GP ReCyko LSD batteries, that seem to come second to eneloops in comparisons - so in other words it's generally regarded as the next best to eneloops.

---

Last edited by UnknownVT; 03-28-2011 at 09:50 AM.

[The Jannie]

Thank you for the further link. I didn't go all technical as those writers did, but I put a set straight from the packet into my ist DL2 which is very choosy about batteries. They showed half full which isn't bad when they were made last year. I've added them to my pool of assorted sets and will see how they go with regular use. There seems to be little point in going into a long-term test as Lidl's supply is erratic. With hardware items they don't often have exactly the same thing month on month.

[selar]

Thank you for the further link. I didn't go all technical as those writers did, but I put a set straight from the packet into my ist DL2 which is very choosy about batteries. They showed half full which isn't bad when they were made last year. I've added them to my pool of assorted sets and will see how they go with regular use. There seems to be little point in going into a long-term test as Lidl's supply is erratic. With hardware items they don't often have exactly the same thing month on month.

Your post exhibits both bad punctuation and grammar. LOL

[The Jannie]

"Your post exhibits both bad punctuation and grammar. LOL"

You're just trying to make me feel at home!

[selar]

Nice to see you have a sense of humour

[The Jannie]

On my salary it's an essential . . .

[jolepp]

IKEA seems to have a variety of LSD NIMH batteries too BTW; a local consumer magazine test found them to be good in holding a charge and among the better ones in other respects too, so they might be worth a try, Of course, the idea of this house label stuff is that the supplier may change at the drop of a hat. Insisting on Eneloops is not a bad idea either as they are not exactly expensive (not conveniently available everywhere though).

[LeoTaylor]

eneloops do have a slight advantage of maintaining higher operating voltage under load than others - but this only really manifests itself after about 3 months from charge.

I use Sanyo Eneloops and for a K1x0D Eneloops make a huge difference. I soon discovered my K100D was far less tolerant of voltage droop than other cameras (including the istD). NIMH batteries failed quickly in the K100D and I could put them in other cameras and they would continue for hundreds more shots.

I used to replace NIMH sets a couple of times per year because they would indicate low battery soon after I started shooting. I just checked and the Eneloops I'm using were bought May 2008 and January 2009.

[UnknownVT]

I use Sanyo Eneloops and for a K1x0D Eneloops make a huge difference. I soon discovered my K100D was far less tolerant of voltage droop than other cameras (including the istD). NIMH batteries failed quickly in the K100D and I could put them in other cameras and they would continue for hundreds more shots.
I used to replace NIMH sets a couple of times per year because they would indicate low battery soon after I started shooting. I just checked and the Eneloops I'm using were bought May 2008 and January 2009.

It's good to see this testimonial.

However other brands of LSD - Low self-discharge NiMH batteries do almost as well as eneloops -

My own tests also using a K100D show over a period of less than 3 months Kodak Pr-Charged (suspected of being GP ReCyko) can do will out perform eneloops in the number of shots/charge.

BUT if they are kept anything over about 3 months from charge (even if unused fully charged) eneloops will show its higher operating voltage maintenance under load advantage over even the generally regarded second best Kodak Pre-Charged (GP ReCyko).

Most people are mostly fine with any reputable brand LSD batteries - but I do agree regular NiMH cannot perform as well as LSD batteries in Pentax dSLRs.

[m42man]

Beware - not all NiMH batteries are equal!

I've used ordinary Lidl NiMH AA batteries in the past (not in my camera), and found that they performed well (when compared with lower-capacity Energisers) in certain equipment, but much worse in others, implying to me that their cell voltage was somewhat lower than the Energisers.

It'll be interesting to see how well these new ones perform in cameras (particularly the seemingly voltage-critical K-x)...