Battery maintenance/ performance

[sumnerd711]

I have a question dealing with battery maintenance.

Recently ive purchased 3 or 4 laser pen/ 1 pointer from gearbest. 3 of which use aaa batteries, and the other a 16340
that i picked up from a vape shop

i also got a nitecore i2 charger from the vape shop

the use i place on the 16340, and 1 set of aaa rechargeables is light, per night

im wondering what the best way to maintain these batteries for full llongevity and power is

should i drain them near to empty and then recharge? or should i top them off every few nights as i have been.

(the batts i have now are not high quality, the triple as being duracell 1.2v nimh, and the 16430 is a trustfitre i think which i know is low quality)

bu for any battery , what should i do? thanks

 

[tttonyyy]

There is no need to cycle them, and no harm in recharging after a partial discharge. Just avoid heat and deep discharge and they will be fine.

 

[sumnerd711]

thanks tony

 

[Cyparagon]

Keeping most battery chemistries between something like 30-70% charge is typically best for longevity, actually. That's how hybrid cars keep their cells so they get 10+ year life out of them. But that's not very practical for consumer grade things, as you wouldn't utilize the whole charge, and AAA cells are cheap.

 

[sumnerd711]

Keeping most battery chemistries between something like 30-70% charge is typically best for longevity, actually. That's how hybrid cars keep their cells so they get 10+ year life out of them. But that's not very practical for consumer grade things, as you wouldn't utilize the whole charge, and AAA cells are cheap.

thanks cyparagon. that makes sense. ive heard of batteries, typically cell phone ones losing life if you recharge them at the wrong time. but yes aaas are not that expensive, and the rechargable ones are a lower voltage than the other ones

 

[anderp]

ive heard of batteries, typically cell phone ones losing life if you recharge them at the wrong time.

You've probably heard of it, but it's 100% untrue. Lithium ion batteries have no memory effect and if they're not drained below ~20% it doesn't reaaaaally matter how you treat them.

For long term storage without use it's best to partially discharge them before storing, but if they're regularly used then there's no need for it at all.

Strictly speaking, like Cyparagon said for the absolute best lifetime you want to never go below 20% or above 80% - but that's only really important when you're trying to get a large battery pack to last upwards of ten years, not when you're dealing with a $3-5 li-ion cell.

The AAAs are NiMh, which can suffer a little if not occasionally fully drained and recharged, but they're hardly expensive and most modern cells don't really care.

The reason you hear of phones/laptops miraculously gaining battery life when they're fully drained and recharged isn't because of the battery itself, it's due to the circuitry inside these batteries that monitors the capacity of the battery and gives you a percentage and time-to-empty, often called a "fuel meter" (or more accurately a coulomb counter)

These circuits are based purely on estimating current battery capacity from previously seen discharge rates and voltage drops per mAh consumed (some really fancy math), so sometimes they get out of sync with the battery's actual capacity. If you run the (for example) laptop until the battery is actually dead (not when the meter shows 0%, but when the machine shuts entirely off due to battery protection cutting in - sometimes you'll get upwards of 30 mins of use on "0%") then leave it on the charger for 24 hours, this will recalibrate the "fuel meter" and suddenly you seem to have so much more battery life than you did before - not because you've actually got more battery capacity, but because the meter is now more accurate.

Apple, for example, recommends this process be done every 2-6 months (and actually recommends two full cycles) to maintain the calibration.

to tl;dr myself: lithium ions don't really care as long as you don't run them until the protection cuts in, and AAA NiMh largely don't care anymore either - and are cheap enough that a few years of lifetime is plenty.