illumiGeek
Enlightened
They have a date code? I guess it's like the horse said, you learn something new every day....The Eneloops that have an 06 date code seem to be doing the best...
I have a bunch of older style Eneloops, and I tried testing them once to see if I could sort the older ones from the newer ones, but they all tested within a few percent of each other, in spite of some being almost new, and others several years old. After reading about a date code in the post above, I took a look at my white Eneloops, but still did not find anything? So I went to the great oracle of wisdom (google) and found the codes. Dayum it's hard to see (then again, I'm quite far sighted).
Anyway, to make a short story long...
With the help of my trusty Fenix L1T V2 R2 (and some strong reading glasses), so far I have found:
8 from 2006 (06 07TA)
8 from 2007 (07 08TL) ** The 07s are really hard to read!
8 from 2008 (08 08ER)
So that's 24, from 3 successive years. Probably have more somewhere (I have way too much battery powered crap, lol!). I just popped 4 of the the 2006 cells into my BC900 for testing. We'll see if they still test like new. Many of these have been cycled hundreds of times, and most have been in high drain hotwire mods and diving lights (often sucked dry). They've usually been charged on my LaCrosse BC900 or Maha MH-C9000 & MH-C801D. A few have been run through an Eveready 15 minute battery cooker, but not very often.
The only Eneloops I have that I know have lost some capacity were the "Duraloops" that were in my LaCrosse BC9009 when it went into melt-down mode. But even though they got too hot to touch, they still work to this day, and last I tested them they had around 1650-1700mA capacity. Three of those are in my PS3 Sixaxis controller (which I use with my PSPgo now), and I don't recall where the 4th one went (probably in a clock).
I wonder how old the rest of my Duraloops are? I've got quite a few of those as well. And I've also got a bunch of the newer 1500 cycle 'loops.
Anyway... I'll test my 2006 cells and report back.
EDIT: First test pass complete!
LaCrosse BC900 (v35): Charge/Test mode (1000mAh charge, 500mAh discharge)
Eneloop AA cells from 2006 (06 07TA)
1=2060
2=2050
3=2040
4=2030
5=2020
6=2000
7=1651 *
8=1590 *
Not bad results! Six out of eight 5.5 year old batteries still testing at or above their new factory specifications. The last 2 cells tested below spec so I am running a break in cycle on my C9000 and then I'll re-test. UPDATE: re-sorted by capacity, and break in still running on low cells (really slow process).
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