Lithium AA batts at CostCo

Posted on by

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that my experience, and the experience of pretty much everyone else reading, has been that at some point your Duracell batteries are going to crap the bed and ruin your device. To prevent this sort of thing, I’ve instituted a pattern of checking the batteries in all my devices on a regular basis in order to catch these things before they do irreparable damage.

An alternative to this sort of thing is to use lithium batteries. It seems that the leaking issue doesn’t occur with the lithium batts nearly as often as with the others. The problem, of course, is that lithium batts, while being awesome, are not cheap. As it turns out, Costco, which is often the source of the troublesome Duracells, is also selling bulk packed lithium AA batts.

At eighty-five cents each, that’s a rather large discount from the 4- and 8-packs that you see at the cash register of your local supermarket.

I was checking the batteries in my gear the other day and discovered that the rechargeable Eneloops that were in my ICOM R6 (highly recommended) were deader than Biden’s nomination possibilities. They apparently just self-discharged over time. Disappointing, but thats why I make sure to carry extra batteries with my gear. Since CostCo is make the lithium batts affordable, I’ll swap those into the R6 instead of the rechargeables. (And also into the spare battery carrier that I keep in my Bag O’ Tricks).

So far, I have not experienced any problems with the lithium batteries but I’m not foolish enough to just assume I never will. So…regular gear inspections will continue, even if the item in question has lithium batts in it.

15 thoughts on “Lithium AA batts at CostCo”

  1. Commander:
    Why are you leaving batteries IN stored devices?
    Mine are in sealed bags taped to the item, so if they do die, they can’t do damage.
    I thought this was standard practice!
    Am I wrong?

    • There are some dvices that, by virtue of their utility, need to be in a constant state of readiness.

  2. For reference, my local Sam’s Club has also been stocking the lithium AA, AAA & even CR123 batteries for some time now.

    Steelheart

  3. They do not carry them at our “local” (80 mile one way) COSTCO. They have ’em at Home Debit.

  4. I’ve had Eneloops stored in a box for nearly 5 years – they were partly discharged but charged right up again. I suspect your Icom R6 has some small current drain. It doesn’t take much to discharge batteries over years. It might be memory backup, or a clock chip. It will be interesting to see how the lithium AAs are in a year.

    • I was coming to suggest this as well. I’d put good money on your R6 having a parasitic drain, even while turned off. I’ve experienced the same in numerous electronic devices that use electronic buttons to turn on (IR lasers, Yaesu VX7, etc.). Even mechanical switched electronics can have a slight drain when off.

  7. I stick to US made lithium ion batteries. There have been issues with the Chinese made batteries blowing up in flashlights and other devices. Surefire’s website recommends against Chinese batteries.

  9. Project Farm on YTube did a long term battery test. One of the takeaways was to NEVER use the chinesium versions, and ALSO to check the package for origin, as adverts may say Japan, but current production may have been switched to china.

  11. I just searched “costco dot com” for combinations of “lithium,” “AA,”, “battery,” etc. and got zero returns for batteries, so I assume it’s a local thing to your area or something only available in the store and, if so, probably not in all stores. I’ll be across the street from my Costco next week, I’ll stop in and check.

  13. CZ, Do you have a battery tester to check for state of charge(ready for recharge or dead cell in a group). Almost every device will have a parasitic drain.

Comments are closed.