you always have to manage a million different cables for each one, and they all suck. why can’t we just use AAA batteries instead of these shitty lithium ones? it’s so fucking frustrating. where can I find gadgets that work while plugged in, or at least don’t need to be recharged every two fucking days?
I’m of much the same opinion, and I refuse to buy certain categories of gadget if the battery is not replaceable with a commodity type. This is becoming increasingly difficult.
Note that this doesn’t have to be AAA/AA batteries, either. The reason so many little gizmos use lithium-whatever rechargeable batteries is because the energy density of lithium is way better than consumer alkaline batteries (with some exceptions that I’ll get to; keep your shirt on) and because they’re available in a lot of form factors – particularly flat ones – that are easy to jam into the product.
For instance, I have quite a few flashlights that take rechargeable lithium chemistry 18650 cells. Some of these allow for charging the battery in the light with a USB cable or whatever, but the important point is if the battery takes a shit I can just take it out and replace it with another one easily and cheaply. I cringe every time I see the backpacking dudebros recommending “slim” USB-rechargeable-only lights to each other like they’re all the best thing ever, but which will inevitably be landfill in a year or two when their little nonreplaceable batteries give up the ghost. Hikers look at me like I have a fish for a head when I mention I use an 18650 light. “But it’s so heavy!” Sure, and it gets 4 times the battery life of your little stupid light, and it will last forever. I also still have a digital camera that runs off of AA’s, and several other oldschool odds and ends of that ilk.
If you are using a gadget that takes consumer AA or AAA cells, by the way, you can now get lithium rechargeable versions of these which are in most cases superior to both disposable alkalines and rechargeable NiMH cells. Whatever you do, don’t run everything you own off of disposable alkalines. That’s just stupid.
Well, I still go for eneloop for aa/aaa uses personally, but that’s a big hell yeah on this comment :)
I’ve got a black diamond headlamp that I’ve been using for 20 years. Cost me less than $40, runs in triples, has seen some serious shit, been banged, stomped, and submerged. It’s still going strong (I assume. It’s been in a box for a year, but the last time I left it in a box for two years, it just needed new batteries).
I used to. I had a Black Diamond ReVolt that mysteriously took a shit one day after almost precisely 1 year of ownership. I replaced it with another one, the new “updated” model, and it did the same thing. So I gave up, and now I have a Shenzen Express no-brand 18650 headlamp that’s been serving me well for about three years. It also cost like a quarter as much. I give up on Black Diamond lights. (I also hope my Black Diamond ATC doesn’t have a hidden built in expiration date, either…)
My 18650 light has just under 4 times the available battery capacity as my old ReVolt. I run a 3600 mAh cell in it, versus the 950 mAh or so AAA’s I could put in the old Black Diamond. And if push comes to shove I can always just pop the cell out of it and swap in another while the first one is charging.
I will point out for any existing ReVolt owners, as well, that the batteries Black Diamond include with the thing are absolute trash. Mine came with 750 mAh cells in it which were far behind state of the art even back when I bought my first one. If you want to put higher capacity cells in it, note that Black Diamond saved a nickel by not including any chemistry sensing hardware in the headlamp; it “detects” their NiMH cells by way of a set of contacts in the battery compartment that touch an unwrapped section of their cells. If contact is made it assumes you have rechargeables in there and if it isn’t it assumes you loaded disposable cells and won’t charge them. If you want to use aftermarket batteries with it and allow them to charge in the headlamp, you’ll have to either peel some of the wrapping off of your cells or apply some foil tape or something. (This is surely to prevent imbeciles from putting alkalines in there and plugging it in, causing them to go off bang.)