Posts Tagged ‘Zinc battery’

1.5V AA Toshiba E-Power Battery Tests

10, Dec 2013

1-5v-aa-toshiba-e-power-zinc-battery

The 1.5V AA Toshiba E-Power batteries are Carbon-Zinc primary batteries and are the third model in Toshiba’s line of such batteries. According to the manufacturer these batteries are supposed to provide 25% improved performance vs Heavy Duty line and while we still haven’t tested the standard 1.5V AA Toshiba Heavy Duty batteries, we have tested the Super Heavy Duty model, so we could compare these to the E-Power series of Carbon-Zinc products. Just a reminder, the Zinc batteries do offer shorter shelf life and lower capacity and are not suitable for high load applications as compared to the Alkaline primary batteries. The Toshiba E-Power batteries we tested here were with an expiration date 05-2015.


1-5v-aa-toshiba-e-power-zinc-battery-capacity

Time for the tests to start for the 1.5V AA Toshiba E-Power batteries beginning with a low constant current discharge rate of 0.1A and the result we got was 731 mAh as capacity. This is a decent result for a Carbon-Zinc batteries, but compared to the Toshiba Super Heavy Duty batteries the E-Power does provide less useable capacity. Increasing the load to 0.2A and the E-Power still does pretty good, though at 0.5A the performance is not that good already and 1.0A proves to be too much. As expected these batteries do perform well, but are nothing special even for Zinc batteries. They are suitable for low load applications, but not for high load ones where you should definitely consider either good Alkaline batteries or even NiMH batteries.

The performance of the 1.5V AA Toshiba E-Power batteries in our tests:

– 731 mAh at 0.1A load
– 516 mAh at 0.2A load
– 199 mAh at 0.5A load
– 36 mAh at 1.0A load

– 0.874 Wh at 0.1A load
– 0.589 Wh at 0.2A load
– 0.207 Wh at 0.5A load
– 0.036 Wh at 1.0A load

9V Toshiba Heavy Duty Carbon Zinc Battery Tests

29, Nov 2013

9v-toshiba-heavy-duty-battery

The 9V Toshiba Heavy Duty batteries we are testing here are essentially lower capacity Zinc batteries, even though they are not labeled as such the Heavy Duty in the name points exactly to that along with the lack of Alkaline anywhere written on the battery. These batteries are often found in supermarkets for example and are relatively cheap, so you can often make a mistake of taking them if you need a 9V battery for some device. And while nowadays 9V batteries are not so commonly used, there are still a lot of devices that need them and it is a wise idea to spend your money on something better that will last longer. The particular battery we are testing here is with an expiration date of 01-2016 and according to Toshiba these batteries are suitable for slightly heavy duty to light duty applications such as flashlights, radio cassette recorders and clocks.


9v-toshiba-heavy-duty-battery-capacity

In order to test the capacity of the 9V Toshiba Heavy Duty batteries we are using a constant current discharge rate of 0.05A (50 miliampers) and we have managed to get just 4 mAh out of the Toshiba battery. No, that is not a mistake, it simply means that our test discharge current seems to be a bit higher for these batteries and they simply cannot handle it well. So much for recommending these over any other Zinc batteries as we usually should get about 100-150 mAh as useable capacity in our test scenario under these conditions. In fact we have managed to get more useable capacity out of a Carbon Zinc battery that has expired already than what this new Toshiba battery has managed to provide. At a lower loads the battery should probably handle better and be able to provide higher useable capacity, however that does not make it things any better – in short we are very disappointed from the result.

The performance of the 9V Toshiba Heavy Duty batteries in our tests:

– 4 mAh at 0.05A load

– 0.030 Wh at 0.05A load


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