I’ve got a whole set of Imedion and Eneloop batteries that are low discharge. The big advantage is they keep most of their charge for up to a year, so great for most applications (like remote controls) where you don’t use it much. And their capacities are pretty good.
The older Eneloops were 2000 mAh and the Imedions are 2400 mAh, so Imedions were pretty easy to pick, but now the technology has matured and many folks have it, so stefanv.com did a good review of all of them. There is a lot of OEMing, but to summarize the big issues are are they made in Japan or in China or in Taiwan…
Duracell, Energizer, Sanyo, Sony, and President’s Choice batteries look identical (ignoring the artwork on the sleeve of course). They are also all made in Japan. The Rayovac and Panasonic batteries (from China) look and perform similarly to one another but quite differently from the Japanese brands. Likewise, the Powerex (Taiwan) and Easypix (China) batteries are similar to each other in appearance and performance, and different from the others. My theory is that these brands of batteries are made by only three or four different manufacturers.
In general, the Japanese ones (eg. Sanyo) retained longer 90% of their capacity and more likely to retain more than 1V (typically when low battery comes on), with Taiwan in between and the Chinese ones the worst.
Or if you are really analytic, look at the Rag plots at
Pricewise at Thomas-distributing, we see the prices are quite different:
- Sony Eneloop 2500 mAH. $5/AA
- Sony Eneloop 2000 mAh. $2.45/AA
- Maha Imedion 2400 mAH. $2.60/AA
- Lenmar 2150 mah. $3.35/AA
