With our son coming any day now, I feel like we’re about to really ramp up our battery usage. For the past couple years, I’ve been investing in Eneloop rechargeable batteries. They hold a charge very well in storage and can be found at a decent price. I charge them with a La Crosse BC-700. It’s a wonderful little device that gives you detailed readouts about the state of your battery and provides a variety of charging speeds and options to get the most life out of your batteries.
I recently also picked up some spacers which lets me put AA batteries into a device that takes C and D batteries. They won’t last nearly as long as a full C or D cell, but those suckers are expensive so using a rechargeable is an attractive proposition. I suspect it will be a fine substitute in many cases. There are also bigger C and D rechargeables but I’ll need a new charger for those and I haven’t made the commitment there yet.
Based on current Amazon prices, a rechargeable AAA or AA battery is about 4 times more expensive than it’s alkaline counterparty. That means that I don’t generally use rechargeables in extremely low draw situations like clocks, but we use them everywhere else. And I suppose if you look at a big enough time span, even using them in clocks would pay off.
Is there anything you like better than Eneloops? Do you use C or D cell rechargeables?