9910 battery life

[garyfritz]

The remote for my DVD player (Momitsu v880N) uses one of those little button batteries (CR2025). It's still going strong after 18 months of use.

I've been using my 9910 for a little over a month and already it's showing a "low battery" indicator! And I almost never use the backlight.

The CR2025 is rated at 150-170 mAh. Alkaline AAA's are rated around 1200 mAh. I think it would be additive, i.e. 4 AAA's would be 4800 mAh, but even if we just count one battery, that's still about 7.5x the battery capacity of the CR2025.

Now the 9910 does get a lot more use than the v880N remote did -- for example, I have macros to turn on/off 4 devices with a single command, which I use to power on/off the HT. And any volume tweaking during movies was handled by another remote, so the v880N remote didn't have to do that. But still, that seems like a mighty short battery life. I don't think it's getting 7.5x as much use as the v880N remote, but even if it was, 7.5x more usage with 7.5x more juice should translate to roughly similar battery life, instead of 1/20th as much.

So why are the 9910's batteries dying so quickly? Is this typical, due to the 9910's stronger IR emitter AND the RF transmitter?

Guess I'd better go get some NIMH AAAs... (Hopefully the 9910 accepts NIMHs OK?)

Gary

[ElizabethD]

Hopefully the 9910 accepts NIMHs OK?

Yes. And they last forever, many months. In a year I only changed them once, perhaps twice in the normal use 9910. In another, subjected to heavy use of up/downloading and testing they go for 3-4 months.
I use Duracells and a charger for spares with trickle charge. Green RShack ones are more expensive and a bit thin, so they break loose easily and rattle.

BTW, a friend with a high-end digital camera, got twice as many flashes from my batteries than from the regular ones.

[garyfritz]

Thanks, Liz. I thought this was a fresh set of alkalines, but maybe I dug 4 questionable ones out of the junk drawer -- I don't remember. I'll go get some Duracell NIMHs.

Gary