When looking for the best rechargeable batteries that will be suitable for your product or device, a number of questions should be in your mind. A simple and quick evaluation of your needs, desires and requirements at this stage will help to ensure that any rechargeable battery purchased does not later turn out to be unsuitable for your application. It is best to eliminate certain categories, types, brands or sometimes even manufacturers of battery at this stage than to later come to this realisation and then have experienced significant financial loss as a result of this bad decision.

Although to the average consumer, batteries are seen to be of two families, rechargeable and single-use there are actually several sub-categories if you will. Single use batteries are available in a number of different formulas, for example, Alkaline, Zinc Chloride, Heavy Duty, Extra Heavy Duty, Lithium to name just a few. Likewise, rechargeable batteries are also available in a number of types and configurations including NiMh, NiCD, Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer. (When we refer to Lithium we are referring to the rechargeable types, not something like the recent AA Lithium Batteries that are non-rechargeable but tremendously powerful)

While it is realised that each technology has its own positive and negative aspects, the best rechargeable batteries are usually said to the NiMh (which stands for Nickel Metal Hydride) as these offer an excellent trade-off, or compromise, if you prefer between cost, capacity, power, voltage, current, recharge time, discharge time and voltage curve. They perform very well in devices that are high drain and used regularly such as the digital camera. Many camera shops will now recommend the NiMh battery over any other type of AA rechargeable battery regardless of cost. If the device you are hoping to replace the batteries of is a little older and also has the facility to charge the batteries in the device without remove them (by means of a plug-in transformer) you will probably be safer replacing the batteries like-for-like. This means that if for example you have a radio that you are able to plug in and have it recharge it’s 600mah NiCd batteries, it is wise to replace the batteries with 600mah NiCds rather than risk putting 2500mah NiMh cells in their place.