I’m keeping a mumber of my first generation Eneloops around. Around 10% of the ones I bought in the 2010s died, the others are still duing duty in my TV remote control etc.

The ones that died mostly died because of staying in a moving box for around 6 years or so after I divorced and forgot about them.

So I’m amazed how many of them just keep working.

This is basically just a rant from a person who is bad at remembering to charge things.

naw. i like the rechargebles. im not goin back.

Lithium-ion batteries are being used in lots of modest gadgets in which they don’t belong, such as flashlights and TV remotes. There is a class of gadgets that you should never have to charge—ones that tend to be needed right away, at specific moments. A flashlight, for example, serves its most essential purpose during a blackout, when juicing up its battery would be impossible. Yet some flashlights are now designed with batteries that cannot simply be swapped out—as if having lithium-ion cells somehow made them better instead of worse.

The guys at !flashlight@lemmy.world really like flashlights with removable lithium-ion 18650 cells.

goes looking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-discharge

That has 2–3% per month for lithium-ion.

It has low-self-discharge NiMH batteries – Eneloop is a popular example – as having the lowest self-discharge rate of the rechargeable types, at 0.25% per month. That’s higher than alkaline, but for a lot of things, that’s fine (and alkaline does have self-discharge too).

Recently, I had to go into my attic to investigate a roof leak. It’s dark up there, so I pulled out a nifty headlamp that I’d purchased on a lark a while back, on the premise that sometimes you need a headlamp. That time had come! But then I realized that my headlamp needed to be charged, which meant digging up the right cable and AC adapter, and waiting hours until its battery was full. All that waiting turned out to be in vain, because the recharged light went out minutes into my task, just when I had reached the deepest darkness of my attic. Somehow, I got out again.

I have a headlamp that takes AA batteries, a battery charger, and a bunch of NiMH Eneloops. They don’t have the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, but I can do what the author wants with it, charge and let them sit for a reasonably long period of time, and still have them pretty usable.

But I generally don’t even bother these days, because I also have a cell phone always with me with a rechargeable lithium ion battery that gets charged every day and has a built-in flashlight, and is good enough for most small flashlight stuff. I have a couple of flashlights floating around (as well as one of those fancy 18650-lithium-ion ones with a firmware that the !flashlight@lemmy.world crowd likes), but I just don’t use them any more, because the cell phone is good enough for most stuff, and it’s always with me.

I feel like the real problem isn’t Lithium-Ion batteries, but specifically non-removable Li-ion batteries. With some devices, non-removable isn’t as huge of a deal, but with other items such as headphones, mice, and gamepads, I’d rather have AA batteries than non-removable Li-ion. In the event that a battery dies while using the device, having to tether yourself sucks. Whereas taking 2 seconds to swap the battery is simple and quick.

Now, the best of both worlds is just a removable Li-Ion battery. That way you can charge overnight, and just swap to another battery when it unexpectedly dies. My headset does that and I love it. Similarly, I used to have that with my LG G4 and it was amazing. This combo yields the best convenience and is best for the environment as you don’t need to recycle as many batteries or replace the whole product when the non-removable battery starts dying too quickly.

The EU is making non-removeable batteries kindda illegal for new devices from 2027.

Link to legislation.

I know it’s okay to throw away traditional alkaline battery cells in the trash or the ocean or whatever, but I always thought that doing so was improper, so I’ve just been collecting a bag of them thinking that I’ll eventually figure out how to dispose of them properly. The article implies that it’s proper to just throw them in the trash. Is that true?