Was there ever a time in your life when you had just that perfect photo moment, but your camera suddenly runs out of juice? Or you always carry your pocket-sized digicam in your, well, pocket, but when you find the need to slip it out for that once-in-a-lifetime scene, you find out your NiMH rechargables had self-discharged over the weekend (who remembers to charge regularly, anyway?).
Or perhaps you’re just too tired of having to lug around sets and sets of double-A alkalines so you won’t run out of power when you need it.
This may be good news to you.
Panasonic earlier this year released its Oxyride batteries to the non-Japanese market. Oxyride is touted as a better disposable batt technology over Alkaline for high-drain applications (another alternative is Lithium, such as what Energizer E2 uses. And they’re available locally (for some time now).
Panasonic claims you get more than twice the life over standard Alkaline cells in high-drain applications, such as digital photography, and this has been tested and proven by various third-party tests such as with this PCWorld article.
Of course, performance may not be that good in low-drain applications because of the chemistry of the battery–you will not notice any improvement in performance if you use these cells, say, in your wall clock or calculator.
I got a two-pack from the local grocery store this weekend for PhP 85.00, for use with my Nikon 2100. Not bad a price, considering it’s only about PhP 20.00 more expensive than a Panasonic two-pack Alkaline. I haven’t seen any four-packs, though. I’ll see if Oxyride performs as well as advertised.