Best Rechargeable Batteries   

Battery Company has been supplying the best rechargeable batteries to consumers for over 15 years.  We stock all the big battery brands at the lowest prices, including Ansmann, Infapower and Uniross.  You can buy rechargeable batteries for all your electronic devices including laptops, digital cameras, mp3s and games consoles.  We stock batteries compatible with hundreds of makes and models, including Samsung, Toshiba, Panasonic, Acer, Nikon and Kodak. 

If you’re fed up of costly, inconvenient alkaline battery replacements then read on and find out how to choose the best rechargeable batteries for your needs.

Why am I Using so Many Batteries?

Normal Alkaline Batteries simply weren’t designed to meet the high power demands of today's electronic devices.  They may be fine to power your kitchen clock or TV remote, but if you’ve ever used them in a digital camera, you’ll find even the best brands will only last 2 or 3 shots.  While they have a high capacity, they can only deliver this if the power is used slowly.  This doesn’t apply in electronics such as Wii remotes and mp3 players which are high-drain devices.  Power simply depletes far too quickly given the technology available.

Choosing the Best Rechargeable Batteries

Here are some things you need to be aware of; helping you decide the best rechargeable batteries depending on usage.

NiCd Batteries & Memory Effect

If you’ve used rechargeable batteries before and didn’t rate them; chances are you were using older Alkaline rechargeable batteries (which are terrible) or Nickel-cadmium batteries suffering from memory effect.  The memory effect is when a NiCd battery has not been entirely emptied before the next charge and overtime battery capacity is reduced. 

NiCd batteries were the first re-chargeables, created in 1899. However, Cadmium is a toxic element and was banned for most uses by the European Union in 2004. They are still used in some applications such as for emergency lighting due to their better self-discharge rate.  For normal, domestic use, they’ve been almost completely superseded by nickel-metal hydride (NiMH).

NiMH batteries

Introduced to solve the NiCd memory problem, these are the most commonly used types of rechargeable batteries.  They can be partially discharged and charged as many times as you like (up to around 1000 times) and they will always have full capacity.  They’ll run on a single charge for 3-4 times longer than the life of an alkaline battery in a digital camera.  The best rechargeable batteries for everyday use are NiMHs. 

The Battery Company stock NiMH batteries in all sizes, AA, AAA, C, D and PP3 by top brand names; Energizer, Camlink, Infrapower and Ansmann.  No brand is necessarily better than the other, check out specifications for yourself once you’ve read a few more pointers.

What’s mAh?

A rechargeable battery is measured by its charging capacity in mAh (milli amp hours).  The best rechargeable batteries will have the highest mAh or the greatest capacity.

Disadvantages of NiMH

NiMH's are great all-around batteries but they have a high self-discharge rate.  In other words the battery will run down in a matter of weeks or months even when it's just sitting there in the package or a switched-off device.  So they're not good for things like flashlights or smoke detectors or for any item that is left idle for months at a time and is then expected to work.

What’s a Pre-charge Rechargeable?

The best rechargeable batteries are the newer types of NiMH that that have significantly lower self-discharge rates like the Uniross Hybrio Ultra.  You’ll often see these advertised as ‘pre-charged’ or ‘ready-to-use’ as the manufacturer can pre-charge then and they won’t deteriorate whilst they sit on the shelf.

Lithium-ion

Li-Ion batteries solve both problems associated with the other two types of batteries; they are full voltage and suffer no memory problems.  They have slow discharge, allowing them to keep a near full charge when not in use.  They are also able to last longer in high-drain electronics than NiMHs.  Their most common applications are rechargeable batteries for cameras and laptops.

Lithium-poly

Li-Poly are smaller than Li-ion batteries and they can last 100% longer.  Used in mobile phones, laptops, Amazon's Kindle, iPads and iPhones.

The Battery Company stocks the best rechargeable batteries for all your consumer electronics such as Sony, Nikon, Kodak and Canon digital cameras and Acer, Panasonic, Samsung and Packard Bell laptops.

We can make up battery packs Into any configuration and with any battery. Please ask for specific quote (we cannot make up singular packs, only multiples please)