Hi everybody, Scott here with some random nickel metal hydride cells that I got from AliExpress Cellar, Shenzhen, Dekang International Trade. The cost for 8.00 was $5.68 US plus a dollar for shipping. That's the final price of 83 cents per cell. And that's an incredible deal. Almost too good to be true in fact. By comparison the last time I ordered a pack of highly regarded Panasonic Eneloop batteries from Amazon they were $2.82 cents per cell. That's $2.00 more expensive than these generic Chinese models. Needless to say I felt they required some testing to see how they'd stack up. Oh and I forgot to mention that while the Eneloop's claims have a capacity of 1900 milliamp hours, these green monsters claim to be 3,800 milliamp hours. It's probably no coincidence that that's exactly double. The first thing I noticed upon taking them out of the package is that they're much lighter in weight than the Eneloop cells. In any case into the charger they went and just for fun a time lapse video of the charging process. You can see by the different charge rates that they held an uneven charge from the factory. Next I wanted to get an idea of discharge and capacity of course. I grabbed a miniature LED light panel off my shelf and decided to test out an idea for tapping the battery connections. It worked pretty well so I'll briefly show you what I did. I took some aluminum foil from the kitchen and cut a strip off of it about a centimeter and width. I then stuck the foil to a short length of electrical tape being somewhat careful to keep it centered. I made two of these in different lengths cutting one end right across the foil and on the other end I left the tape a bit long. Besides then got a trim to bring them close to the size of the battery contacts. I then made another strip this time letting the foil stick out past the end of the tape significantly. The first two strips are meant to be oriented back to back so the layers of the tape insulate the strips of foil from each other. Stuck into the light panel next to one battery terminal would mean that I could jump from my M meter across the two strips to tap into the circuit. The other strip at the exposed foil at the end would tap the other battery terminal set another multimeter could be connected across the entire battery. This allowed me to leave the light line flat in its back so it would be visible to the camera alongside the meters. I knew something was wrong immediately after I powered up the light. The four Chinese cells were supplying 5.32 volts or 1.33 volts per cell. When the load was connected, volts sagged rapidly to 4.86 volts. That's about 1.2 volts per cell and tumbled down from there quickly. Let's compare the enoloupes in the same arrangement. You'll see that they provided 5.33 volts which is 1.33 volts each just like the Chinese cells but only sag to 5.24 volts or 1.31 volts each under load. I have to note here that the current reading on the smaller meter is wrong for the enoloupes. When inserting the last enoloup cell I abrated the aluminum foil and tape on my test connection so that there was some continuity between the two bits of foil. I did confirm later that the light was drawing the same amperage from the enoloupes as it was with the Chinese cells. Here's a bit of video showing the discharge of the Chinese cells versus the enoloupes. Again the M meter on the right is not accurate but the one on the left is giving a good read and it's showing the light is drawing about 1 amp to start. This test probably isn't ideal because 1 amp is a lot for double A-sized NIMH cells. However I didn't want the test to run forever and I figured it's as good as time as any to stress these suspicious lime green guys. To keep this from becoming ultra boring the rest of it is a time lapse of one frame every five seconds which equates to 120 times normal speed and oh now the random cells have already died. Okay they're not completely dead because as you can see the light is still lit. However I didn't want to overly discharge either set of cells so I ended the test around the three volt mark which is about 750 millivolts per cell. I'll consider that the point of death for purposes of testing. So the cells from Alibaba express only ran the light for a bit over 20 minutes but the enoloupes could probably give a certain bunny rabbit a run for its money. They held it a solid 4.8-ish volts for a long time and at 1.2 volts per cell that sort of discharge curve is just what you'd expect from nickel metal hydrides. Of course they did die eventually but only when they reached the 109 minute mark because the light draws an amp at the nominal voltage of 4.8 that means the cells gave roughly 1800 milliamp hours very close their quoted spec of 1900 milliamp hours. The random cells 342 milliamp hours. That's it. Less than 10% of their quoted capacity and that's being generous because they weren't even supplying a full amp for the majority of their runtime. After running the cells down just for curiosity's sake I checked their temperature with this probably inaccurate $13 thermometer. Let's call it a hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit about 41 centigrade on average for the Chinese cells and a hundred and 23 degrees Fahrenheit which is 50 centigrade for the enoloupes. I said earlier that the random batteries felt very light. Too light. After all the more nickel and hydrides in the cell the more energy will hold and the more it will weigh. So here's how it measures up. Four of the green cells weighed in at 55 grams or 13.75 grams each. That's a hair under half-nounce for my fellow Americans. Is that better good? Well who the hell knows but it's only fair to once again bring in the enoloupes. 105 grams which is 26.25 grams each. 0.935 ounces. So let's review. The enoloupes cost about three times as much as these generic pieces of crap but they store about five times the energy and weigh nearly twice as much. So it's pretty clear that when comparing these two products the enoloupes are a much better value for money. They also provide a more stable voltage and look a lot nicer to boot and it shows that either the random green cells are really inefficient or they're not actually nickel metal hydride cells at all. The random off-brand manufacturer is clearly lying about their specification of 3,800 milliamp hours. I believe it's not even theoretically possible to cram that kind of energy density into a double-A size package using NIMH technology and the seller's quite obvious photoshopping of the product photos adds a level of shame to this whole thing that is really deplorable. On the other hand the enoloupes appear to come in right around their specified 1.9 amp hour capacity. Now my testing undoubtedly did not mirror whatever they used to come up with their spec but it's quite obvious that they're not a scam in any way. I didn't make this video as a review or an endorsement of Panasonic's batteries. There are undoubtedly tons of great NIMH cells out there, probably some of which could match the enoloupes for quality and maybe even beat them on price. But this really goes to show the merit of the old adage that you get what you pay for. Well that's it for this let's open quick video. If you have any ideas for arbitrary and crappy Ali Express products and you'd like to see me review, please let me know in the comments either here on my blog at s.co.tt. And of course thanks for watching.