# BATTERY GEEKS, enlighten me please. Sony Alkaline LR03 AAA vs Lithium AAA?



## Midnight Lumina (Apr 16, 2014)

I have a dilemma. I bought a Sony item, but the manual shows only the *battery life* based on _Sony LR03 Alkaline batteries_ that come with it by default. Now, I want to make sure my device lasts as long as it possibly can, but I am not sure if "Sony" alkaline batteries are some special sort of things that make "Sony" items last longer. 

So the question is, is there no doubt Lithium batteries would last longer than any Alkaline battery or is there any chance that these included LR03 batteries are in any way better than Energizer Lithium for example? It is very important that I get the best battery life for this device. 

I hope my question is not confusing, I know the Sony technicians couldn't wrap their heads around it. Basically what I want is the longest lasting battery for my Sony device, but I don't know whether I should keep the default "Sony" ones or get better Lithium ones. I just have this idea that because the batteries are of "Sony" they will make the "Sony" item last longer.


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## TEEJ (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> I have a dilemma. I bought a Sony item, but the manual shows only the *battery life* based on _Sony LR03 Alkaline batteries_ that come with it by default. Now, I want to make sure my device lasts as long as it possibly can, but I am not sure if "Sony" alkaline batteries are some special sort of things that make "Sony" items last longer.
> 
> So the question is, is there no doubt Lithium batteries would last longer than any Alkaline battery or is there any chance that these included LR03 batteries are in any way better than Energizer Lithium for example? It is very important that I get the best battery life for this device.
> 
> I hope my question is not confusing, I know the Sony technicians couldn't wrap their heads around it. Basically what I want is the longest lasting battery for my Sony device, but I don't know whether I should keep the default "Sony" ones or get better Lithium ones. I just have this idea that because the batteries are of "Sony" they will make the "Sony" item last longer.



LOL

All manufacturers that sell accessories say to only use their accessories, but, generally, the ones they supply are not even the best for the application, merely best for their book keepers.

As the LR03 is a AAA battery, running at 1.5 volts, you can use the Energizer AAA lithium ion cells as they are also providing 1.5 volts, and, they will outperform the alkaline version, and, won't leak and destroy the Sony item.


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## StarHalo (Apr 16, 2014)

If it's a low-drain application, like a remote control or analog radio, the alkaline will outlast lithiums or NiMH/rechargeables (at the expense of possible leaking.) NiMHs approach the longevity of lithiums but are much cheaper in the long run.


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 16, 2014)

StarHalo said:


> If it's a low-drain application, like a remote control or analog radio, the alkaline will outlast lithiums or NiMH/rechargeables (at the expense of possible leaking.) NiMHs approach the longevity of lithiums but are much cheaper in the long run.



That's what I keep hearing and that's why I'm worried. It's a digital voice recorder if that helps, not sure if having it on high/low quality affects the drainage.


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## TEEJ (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> That's what I keep hearing and that's why I'm worried. It's a digital voice recorder if that helps, not sure if having it on high/low quality affects the drainage.



The more POWER it draws, the more drainage.

The volume being on louder, if it uses tapes, the motor to spin the drives, etc...all increase the drain rates. I think a recorder is not a low drain device though.


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## ChrisGarrett (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> That's what I keep hearing and that's why I'm worried. It's a digital voice recorder if that helps, not sure if having it on high/low quality affects the drainage.



Are you going to be using this device a lot? How often? Use the Sony batteries and see how long you get. Go buy a 4, or 8 pack of the Energizer Lithium Ultimates, or Advanced AAAs and see what you see, trying to time things out for an idea on how long each battery type lasts.

We're all into rechargeable batteries here, so if your digital recorder works on the 1.2v NiMH batteries, even for shorter periods of time, we'd all suggest investing in a decent independent channel smart charger and Eneloops.

Chris


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## TEEJ (Apr 16, 2014)

The Nimhs would save money, but some electronics don't play well with the reduced voltage...some do.


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## StarHalo (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> It's a digital voice recorder



That's a small computer, definitely a higher drain rate. Lithiums will give you best battery life by a sound margin, with much more cost-efficient NiMHs not far behind. Don't bother with alkalines for this device.


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## HKJ (Apr 16, 2014)

TEEJ said:


> The Nimhs would save money, but some electronics don't play well with the reduced voltage...some do.



NiMH does often give higher voltage than Alkaline, the only time alkaline has a advantage is low current devices. 
This is somewhere below 100mA current drain or to say it another way: A device needs to be able to run more than 10 to 20 hours on alkaline without any pause, before it is even worth considering alkaline. Of course, devices that only run a few seconds at a time (Like a remote) is another story.

I have done some comparison here: http://lygte-info.dk/info/ComparisonOfAABatteryChemistry UK.html


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 16, 2014)

Thank you all for the advice, this is more helpful than the technicians ever were. I think I have a better idea now. 



ChrisGarrett said:


> Are you going to be using this device a lot? How often? Use the Sony batteries and see how long you get. Go buy a 4, or 8 pack of the Energizer Lithium Ultimates, or Advanced AAAs and see what you see, trying to time things out for an idea on how long each battery type lasts.
> 
> We're all into rechargeable batteries here, so if your digital recorder works on the 1.2v NiMH batteries, even for shorter periods of time, we'd all suggest investing in a decent independent channel smart charger and Eneloops.
> 
> Chris



I was looking for batteries that will last the longest in a single run (which seem to be disposable lithium ones), because I hope to have this device turned on for long periods of time. The battery life of the LR03 is supposed to give 60 hours on ST record settings, for example - a whole two and a half days. It's a project I am doing, requires the device to just sit there recording.


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 16, 2014)

These are the ones it comes with by the way, the Sony LR03 Alkaline AAA. Is it settled then that these can be outperformed by lithium batteries? I only wonder now about by how much of a margin, I have seen some of the charts/graphs posted here but they did not include these Sony ones.


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## HKJ (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> These are the ones it comes with by the way, the Sony LR03 Alkaline ones. Is it settled then that these can be outperformed by lithium ones? I only wonder now about by how much of a margin, I have seen some of the charts/graphs posted here but they did not include these Sony ones.



All the alkaline I have tested has been close in performance, I would not expect the Sony to be much different from them. Some of the cheaper alkalines will have worse performance.
Lithium primaries are mostly for higher loads, at very low load they will only have a small (if any) advantage over alkaline. I have it on my todo list to test this.


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## StarHalo (Apr 16, 2014)

In higher-drain applications, it's not unusual to see lithiums go a full three to four times longer than alkalines; not to imply this will for sure happen in your case, but the manufacturer's number will be notably short of the lithium cells' potential. 

If you really want to turn this into a project, get a 2 D cell holder from Radio Shack and rig it to the battery compartment contacts; extrapolating from Sony's numbers, you'd get somewhere over three weeks of runtime..


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 16, 2014)

StarHalo said:


> In higher-drain applications, it's not unusual to see lithiums go a full three to four times longer than alkalines; not to imply this will for sure happen in your case, but the manufacturer's number will be notably short of the lithium cells' potential.
> 
> If you really want to turn this into a project, get a 2 D cell holder from Radio Shack and rig it to the battery compartment contacts; extrapolating from Sony's numbers, you'd get somewhere over three weeks of runtime..



THIS is something I had thought of doing but my knowledge was too limited to do it myself - how exactly would I go about doing this? Is it easily done? Would really appreciate it if this process was followed up, this is really what I wanted.


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## StarHalo (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> THIS is something I had thought of doing but my knowledge was too limited to do it myself - how exactly would I go about doing this? Is it easily done? Would really appreciate it if this process was followed up, this is really what I wanted.



Most portable audio recorders won't go over ~100 hours contiguous, so you may want to check your specs before considering it further. Also, I know some Sony recorders can charge NiMHs internally using a USB and/or AC plug; this would be the simplest way for indefinite recording, just load NiMHs and then leave it plugged in while recording.


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 16, 2014)

StarHalo said:


> Most portable audio recorders won't go over ~100 hours contiguous, so you may want to check your specs before considering it further. Also, I know some Sony recorders can charge NiMHs internally using a USB and/or AC plug; this would be the simplest way for indefinite recording, just load NiMHs and then leave it plugged in while recording.



Indeed, the issue with that is that then I would need a portable power source (won't be having any outlet near), and I could not manage to find any that would go with the voice recorder. Recorder is ICD-AX412 by the way, if that makes any difference.


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## StarHalo (Apr 16, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> Recorder is ICD-AX412 by the way, if that makes any difference.



The instructions say it can only work with a maximum 500 Mb file; at the dead-last recording quality of 8 Kbps (which will require a pristine recording environment, we're talking drive-thru intercom audio quality) that's roughly 120 hours, and the odds that the lithiums can pull that off aren't bad. 

Going beyond that would require a different recording device, I picture something running iOS or Android cleverly wired to a large battery pack, which should happily forge ahead recording until its entire internal storage is full, at least a week later..


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 17, 2014)

StarHalo said:


> The instructions say it can only work with a maximum 500 Mb file; at the dead-last recording quality of 8 Kbps (which will require a pristine recording environment, we're talking drive-thru intercom audio quality) that's roughly 120 hours, and the odds that the lithiums can pull that off aren't bad.
> 
> Going beyond that would require a different recording device, I picture something running iOS or Android cleverly wired to a large battery pack, which should happily forge ahead recording until its entire internal storage is full, at least a week later..



Yeah the device seems to work around this though, just splits the file accordingly in order to continue running (bought a 16GB memory card too). All in all, doubt I will find a portable power source for it. I did fondle that idea of finding some way to rig in better batteries through a battery holder but doubt I'll get to that point now. Even so, think 2+ days will have to do.


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## Power Me Up (Apr 17, 2014)

Easy solution: Get an emergency charger for mobile phones - you can get models that have way more energy capacity than a pair of AAA cells - then just use the USB output on one of those to connect to the mini USB connector on the audio recorder to keep it powered for an extended period.

Page 99 of the manual says that it can be powered through the USB connector:
https://docs.sony.com/release/ICDAX412_EN.pdf

The only thing that I think that you would need to watch for is that some of those emergency chargers may not be particularly efficient when supplying such small amounts of power - you would really need to try them out to see, but if you got one has a good capacity and works reasonably efficiently, you could have it running for 10 times longer on the external power source compared to just the AAA cells!

Be mindful that a lot of the emergency chargers listed on places like Ebay are way overrated on their capacity!


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 17, 2014)

Power Me Up said:


> Easy solution: Get an emergency charger for mobile phones - you can get models that have way more energy capacity than a pair of AAA cells - then just use the USB output on one of those to connect to the mini USB connector on the audio recorder to keep it powered for an extended period.
> 
> Page 99 of the manual says that it can be powered through the USB connector:
> https://docs.sony.com/release/ICDAX412_EN.pdf
> ...



Thank you for looking into this! That's one of the solutions I thought about, but I worry about issues such as compatibility (not that I know much about the matter). I have the idea that because such chargers are for mobile phones/iPhones and whatnot, they somehow will not work adequately for my voice recorder. Furthermore, should I be worried about overcharging at all? I now have the idea it may overheat or something if left there for a few days. 

I had my eyes on this thing for example:
http://www.amazon.com/Energizer-Instant-Charger-Mobile-Phones/dp/B0093GIME8/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1397776731&sr=8-5&keywords=emergency+charger 
and this one which seems to be more universal in terms of the items it powers:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGJJNVO/?tag=cpf0b6-20

But I was put off by that very thing I just mentioned - only says mobile phones and iPhones. Can you guys confirm this would work?


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## Power Me Up (Apr 17, 2014)

The Energizer model only has micro USB out, but your device has a mini USB connector, so that wouldn't work without some sort of adapter - I'm not sure if anyone makes adapters to go from micro USB to mini USB - I know that they exist the other way though. The Energizer model also says that it uses Energizer lithiums - I wouldn't count on it running on anything else even though it should be able to. Taking into account the inefficiencies of converting up to 5V and then converting back down, I'd expect that you would only get about 3x longer on that charger even if you could get it to work. The other one might give you around 5 times longer running time.

The other one has a standard USB A output connector, so there isn't any reason that I can see why it wouldn't work.

These devices just put out 5V at up to a certain amount of current - as long as they're able to supply enough current for the end device to work, they should work with pretty much anything that can take USB power.

I wouldn't be too concerned about overcharging your device - unless it's faulty or incorrectly designed, it shouldn't be overcharging its batteries - it won't draw more current from the emergency charger than it needs. As long as the emergency charger is putting out a clean 5V output, the device that is connected to it won't know the difference between it and a wall adapter!


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 17, 2014)

Power Me Up said:


> The Energizer model only has micro USB out, but your device has a mini USB connector, so that wouldn't work without some sort of adapter - I'm not sure if anyone makes adapters to go from micro USB to mini USB - I know that they exist the other way though. The Energizer model also says that it uses Energizer lithiums - I wouldn't count on it running on anything else even though it should be able to. Taking into account the inefficiencies of converting up to 5V and then converting back down, I'd expect that you would only get about 3x longer on that charger even if you could get it to work. The other one might give you around 5 times longer running time.
> 
> The other one has a standard USB A output connector, so there isn't any reason that I can see why it wouldn't work.
> 
> ...



Well well, seems like I will be buying this unless someone has a serious objection. This brings the earlier and probably final question - you are fond of eneloops on this forum, but in terms of sheer lasting power (not how many times it can be recharged, but how long it lasts once it is charged), which AAA rechargeable battery would give me best results?

(talking about batteries for the voice recorder itself)


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## Power Me Up (Apr 17, 2014)

There are Eneloop XX cells which have a little more capacity than the regular Eneloops (rated 900 mAh minimum versus 750 mAh minimum) which you might want to consider.

There are also Turnigy 900 mAh AAA cells which seem reasonable - their individual price is very good, but I wouldn't expect them to last as many cycles as the Eneloops. The Turnigy cells are available from HobbyKing:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/..._900mah_Low_Self_Discharge_ready_to_use_.html

Postage on the Turnigy cells is a significant cost though unless you're buying a lot of them or other things at the same time. HobbyKing has them listed in their US warehouse, but they're out of stock:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=39493


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## panwx (Apr 17, 2014)

[h=2]Lithium AAA ,just won't leak[/h]


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 17, 2014)

Well it seems like I am set, but I do have a worry - what are the chances of the *power source* running out of charge early? No doubt it will lose charge even the battery of the voice recorder is full, because the source itself must have a discharge rate.

Also, I hope some of you guys work for a good company. The dudes who handle Sony technical issues just know how to read off a manual.


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## SilverFox (Apr 17, 2014)

Hello Midnight Lumina,

Welcome to CPF.

In some cases the device would see the external battery as a parallel battery. That means that when you start with everything at a full charge the device would draw from all of the batteries at the same time. At some point low voltage is reached and everything shuts down. I don't know if your device would work like that but it is worth looking into.

The fun thing about custom applications is that after you think you have everything figured out you get a chance to test it. Often the testing reveals additional considerations and sometimes it works beyond belief...

Tom


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 17, 2014)

SilverFox said:


> Hello Midnight Lumina,
> 
> Welcome to CPF.
> 
> ...



It's been my pleasure to be here, people are very helpful. I am testing the duration of battery life even now; what you said about the external pack being as a parallel battery, I hope that means it would be as though the recorder *had* all of that battery life in its compartment. If that is so, then it is good news.


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## StarHalo (Apr 17, 2014)

My reading of the manual is that the recorder draws off the USB port to charge its AAAs as needed, so you'd be using one set of batteries to charge another. It implies that everything operates normally during charging so I'm not seeing any obvious impediment, but it is a rather expedient configuration, it'll come down to how the recorder manages charging repeatedly while continuously connected.


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## Midnight Lumina (Apr 18, 2014)

StarHalo said:


> My reading of the manual is that the recorder draws off the USB port to charge its AAAs as needed, so you'd be using one set of batteries to charge another. It implies that everything operates normally during charging so I'm not seeing any obvious impediment, but it is a rather expedient configuration, it'll come down to how the recorder manages charging repeatedly while continuously connected.



Thank you all for the help on this. Best wishes to all!


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## Power Me Up (Apr 18, 2014)

Midnight Lumina said:


> Well it seems like I am set, but I do have a worry - what are the chances of the *power source* running out of charge early? No doubt it will lose charge even the battery of the voice recorder is full, because the source itself must have a discharge rate.



I know that I'm disagreeing with SilverFox (our resident battery guru) but what I would expect to happen is that the external power source will be fully discharged first, and then the recorder would continue operating on the internal batteries until they also went flat.

The reason why I say this is that the recorder will be using the external supply to keep the internal batteries fully charged and it won't start drawing from the internal batteries until the external source is depleted.

Depending on the design of the circuit used in the external battery, it may well be wasting more power than it's putting out when the load on it is very low - the only way to know one way or the other is to test it as you're already doing.



> Also, I hope some of you guys work for a good company. The dudes who handle Sony technical issues just know how to read off a manual.



As someone else pointed out to me the other day, if the people answering the phones understood things better, they'd probably be doing a different (better) job...


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## SilverFox (Apr 18, 2014)

It is a good thing this project has moved on to actual testing.

I was thinking another possibility would be that the external battery would do nothing and may not charge the internal battery until the unit is shut off...

Lots of possibilities.

Tom


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## Power Me Up (Apr 18, 2014)

SilverFox said:


> I was thinking another possibility would be that the external battery would do nothing and may not charge the internal battery until the unit is shut off...



According to the manual I linked to earlier, it will charge the batteries whilst it's in use:

On page 99 of the manual:
https://docs.sony.com/release/ICDAX412_EN.pdf


> Now you can use the IC recorder while charging the batteries.


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## SilverFox (Apr 18, 2014)

Hello Power Me Up,

Well, if we are actually going to read the manual I will have to throw some of my idle speculation out the window...  

I see a couple of interesting comments. If you hook up to a computer you can't use the device but, as you indicated, if you hook up to the AC power you can. On page 114 near the bottom it says 

"Once the batteries are fully charged, it is not recharged
automatically, even if you leave the IC recorder connected to the
USB AC adaptor. You can use the IC recorder while it is
connected to the USB AC adaptor, but charge it again after
disconnecting it."

Does this mean that the AC charger has a one shot timer? If so this may not effect an external battery pack but this is where some testing will reveal what is going on.

Tom


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## StarHalo (Apr 18, 2014)

SilverFox said:


> Does this mean that the AC charger has a one shot timer? If so this may not effect an external battery pack but this is where some testing will reveal what is going on.



Could mean it won't even try to recharge if you have full batteries in the recorder and then attach anything USB, no way to know without testing. 

What if the batteries in the recorder were somewhat charged, and then you attached a battery pack via USB, but it charged so slowly that the recorder's batteries never reach 100%..


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## RetroTechie (Apr 19, 2014)

If you're using USB power anyway: have you tried that _without_ any batteries in the device?

USB power is simply 5V DC. An USB car charger will produce that from any DC voltage between 9-15V or so, pick any battery type/configuration that gives the desired voltage and mAh capacity. A small sealed lead acid battery like used for scooters, 3x 18650 Li-ion in series, a 10-pack of D-size NiMH's in series, whatever.


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