Good Performance and Great Value.
There doesn’t seem to be very many objective, evidence based reviews here – so I thought I’d post my findings to help shed some light on these EBL rechargables. Since Amazon shows both D cell and C cell reviews here, I’ll combine mine here, too. I bought 20 D’s and 16 C’s for my vintage radio collection and a few Mag-Lights I have… There isn’t a real choice for name brand D and C cell rechargeable batteries (as there are for AA and AAA). This is why I chose the EBL D cell rated at 10,000 mAh, and the C cell rated at 5,000 mAh. Duracell, Eneloop, and LADDA do not sell rechargeable D and C cells at all. Energizer does, but these are merely glorified AA’s, as the capacity for both their D and C rechargeables are a meager 2,500 mAh. However, both Tenergy and Amazon Basics do offer rechargeable D and C with an advertised capacity of 10k and 5k mAh, like EBL does. For my testing I used two newly bought XTAR Dragon VP4 Plus battery charger/tester’s. This is one of the best out there as it is capable of charging/testing/refreshing anything from AAA to 18650 (and probably more), both NiMH and Lithium, in four independent bays. Another great feature of this charger/tester is that it’s wide enough for four D cells simultaneously. In test mode, this unit will top off the battery to fully charged, then discharge, and finally charge the battery from discharged to 100 percent. This enables the XTAR Dragon to calculate the number of mAh’s both charged, and more importantly, discharged. The discharged number of mAh’s is more important because this is the performance of the battery in use, or rather, how many mAh’s it “gives” versus “takes”. In addition to the mAH charge/discharge rate, the XTAR Dragon can also measure the output voltage and battery resistance in Ohms. This is only the first part of my testing, as I plan to update this review with future results in a year and beyond. All batteries were individually numbered so as to keep track of which one is which for future testing. Upon delivery of my brand new EBL D and C cell batteries, I ran them through the XTAR Dragon’s test mode. The D cells actual charge capacity varied from 10,000 mAh’s (for six of the 20) to a low of 7,216 mAh’s, which averaged out to 7,801 mAh’s (78.01% of advertised capacity). The discharge rate ranged from a high of 7,707 mAh’s to a low of 6,971 mAh’s, which averages out to 7,287 mAh (72.87% of advertised capacity). The C cells fared a little better. For the charge rate they ranged from a high of 4,546 mAh’s to a low of 4,164 mAh’s, which averages out to 4,303 mAh’s (86.1% of advertised capacity). The discharge rate ranged from a high of 4,553 mAh’s to a low of 4,026 mAh’s, which averages out to 4,203 mAh’s (84.09% of advertised capacity). As mentioned earlier, I numbered all of the batteries (20 D cell and 16 C cell) for future reference/testing. I hope to measure in the future how quickly or slowly the batteries discharge over time (percentage) without use for a year. I also hope to see how quickly the actual capacity degrades over time/charging cycles. As I have not bought or tested the Amazon Basic’s or Tenergy rechargeable D and C cell batteries, I cannot compare the EBL’s performance to them. But I would guess that they are probably manufactured in the same factory, or if not, under similar conditions. As such they are probably nearly identical to EBL batteries for performance, which makes EBL batteries a good value, indeed. Read more
