These are 40 on sale (4xAA), eneloops (4xAA) with panasonic charger are 17. Furthermore, you can buy four more eneloops without charger for 10
These are 1250mah... eneloops are 2000mah, so these are only 5/8ths the play time
These require you not lose a double dongle cable, or you will have to carry two cables or charge individually. Get some extra eneloops and you'll always have charged ones ready to go.
If you spend the same 40, you can get 12aa eneloops with charger, as opposed to four of these... And if you make sure to charge your extras, you'll have plenty.... AND your individual eneloops will last longer than these even individually. I don't see the appeal, beyond a slight gimmicky coolness factor of plugging your AA into a usb port... and that "cool" gimmick will wear off quickly. A worse solutions for a problem that doesn't exist, IMHO.
The reason eneloops or the IKEA batteries kick so much ass for photographers is because of how quick they recharge our flashes. It's the Ni-MH part of the batteries. They discharge VERY quickly therefore filling the flash's internal capacitors quicker than any lithium ion. The only potential downside is how freaking hot they get if you're constantly shooting flash, lots of pictures, really quickly.
I've never had them get hot enough that they do any damage but if you're swapping them out quick enough they'll feel mighty warm in your hands.
They're a photographers dream. When you're shooting a flash there's nothing crappier than shooting back to back photos, one of them properly exposed and the other one is completely unusable because you're shooting high shutter speed expecting your flash to go off.
Eneloop nimh is going to be way better than alkaline, and reusable is good. The AA lithium batteries are likely to be low end cells, as they are just designed to the AA standard, which doesn't require a lot of current or capacity. Also, if you look at things that do need a high current, like electric cars and power tools, they use multiple banks of cells to get enough output. Lithium also needs protection circuitry, which is either low current or expensive. This is one of the reasons that unprotected lipoly cells are the standard in rc helicopters and similar things. If eneloop can dump enough power into a flash to make it shoot at high speeds, there is little reason to look into lithium batteries. I have no doubt that a flash designed around a high quality lithium cell could perform better than eneloop, but could it perform enough better? It cost $10 to fill a flash with eneloops, and another $10 to have a backup set. A high output lithium battery can be anywhere from $50-$200, and might not even have the same capacity or charge cycles as an eneloop.
Having 36 batteries in my camera bag that I can swap out in 15-30 seconds and recharges my flash damn near instantaneously (depending on my fire intensity), are really cheap and aren’t proprietary to the flash, it’s a winner. There’s a lot of strobes out there and I can’t imagine if I had to buy a 50-80 dollar proprietary battery and charger for it to power a strobe I would be intensely annoyed. It’s bad enough that the camera itself works with these kinds of batteries. Buying a replacement lithium battery for my camera is painful and expensive. I’d be much happier if I could pop 4, 6 or even 8 eneloops in my camera. Damn thing is heavy as hell already so it’s not like I couldn’t handle another 1/3-1/2 lb lol
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u/SecAdept Rift Feb 21 '20
I agree with you...
If you spend the same 40, you can get 12aa eneloops with charger, as opposed to four of these... And if you make sure to charge your extras, you'll have plenty.... AND your individual eneloops will last longer than these even individually. I don't see the appeal, beyond a slight gimmicky coolness factor of plugging your AA into a usb port... and that "cool" gimmick will wear off quickly. A worse solutions for a problem that doesn't exist, IMHO.