Is it worth buying expensive batteries ?

While we are on the subject of batteries, let’s take a look if it is actually worth buying a battery pack with an expensive price tag, say ENERGIZER or DUREACELL batteries. There is no denying that they are brilliant in performance, but is it really necessary? Or should you go for regular battery pack? After all, batteries are useful to have around and you never know when you might need one. Let’s conclude a few tests to justify the price per voltage of batteries; that would clear a few things up (hopefully):

So, the best thing would be to see how much energy the batteries produce and how much you are paying for them. A traditional regular AA battery would cost you somewhat around $5-$7 for a 20 pack, which is great; ENERGIZER battery pack of 16 sells for $10.95 and DURACELL pack of 20 will cost $13. So that is 20 cents per CELL for the local brand battery, $0.685 for the ENERGIZER and $0.649 for the DUREACELL, you might be able to find a better deal on the ENERGIZER pack if you look around, it usually costs less than those by Duracell.

Now that we have prices all sorted out, let’s take a look at energy they produce, you can test it yourself too, just connect two batteries with a light bulb and calculate the voltage and the time the bulb stays light. People at Wired conducted a similar test and the results are as follows:

As you can see from the graphs, the regular batteries are not even the near the standards of high end batteries they might be cheap, but the voltage drop is drastic even after a little use. By calculating the energies for all three batteries the result becomes even more conclusive:

• Regular batteries: 2983 Joules
• Energizer:10,798 Joules
• Duracell Batteries: 9,398 joules

As you can see, the energizer produced the best results by producing the most amount of energy, meanwhile the performance of regular batteries was no less than disappointing. Now let’s take a look at money to power ratio, to do so, just divide the energy produced by the amount it costs:

• Regular Batteries: 1.49 x 10 ^4 J/USD
• Energizer: 1.58 x 10^4 J/USD
• Duracell: 1.45 x 10^4 J/USD

Surprisingly, the expensive batteries are generally more power efficient as well. Although the regular batteries come at par with the expensive ones, but would you really want to change the battery every few days? Which makes us come to another point, which is; where do you use the batteries. If you are using them in a flashlight or a remote control, perhaps you are better off with regular ones, but if you are running a wireless mouse, headphone or MP3 player, we would suggest that you use renowned brands because not only they would last you longer, but they will not deprive your gadget of Voltage.

If you want to find good deals on batteries, you can always jump to Amazon, BestBuy or Tesco, and yes; expensive batteries are worth it.