Amazon Basics CR1632 battery lasted less than 4 months in keyfob

Energizer is worse. Duracell is best. Its cost and hassle of changing equation .

 

Oh Dang, I just bought a 12 pack of Energizer at Sam's Club

 

I'm struggling with this........

 

A couple decades ago, when I was contracting at a small local company that made a variety of battery powered devices and bought AA cells by the truckloads of pallets, frequent battery capacity tests (with each new product design cycle) showed the leadership changing frequently as the various battery companies took unsynchronized steps ahead. Energizer and Duracell were the most frequent winners, Panasonic usually close on their heels, with some others being very competitive too. Performance was close enough that brand selection was usually determined instead by co-marketing deals.

My collection of test data is now seriously outdated, and never included coin cells. I don't recall HF and Amazon Basics being in this business at that time.

 

Hmm, maybe I'm really Jeff Bozo's long last dad/uncle/brother/son/neighbhor?
But, on Amazon, I'm showing 5 Energizer CR1632 batteries for $6.75.
So, what's the issue with buying/getting Energizer batteries for a car remote?

Energizer CR1632 3V Lithium Coin Battery (5 Count (Pack of 1))
$6.75

Code:

https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-CR1632-Volt-Lithium-Battery/dp/B002U4O5SC
Energizer CR1632 3V Lithium Coin Battery (5 Count (Pack of 1))
$6.75

 

Imho, the above battery testing data is worthless.
Especially, without any information, at all, where those graphs, or data came from.

Google, battery testing.
In many cases, real world performance of battery testing is massively involved and complex.
Google - I'm not going to debate, or argue, something that is super basic, and has been well known, and understood, for many decades (I'm talking about real life performance of batteries, and the issues or considerations).


Great example: Some person offers to sell you their 13-year old pristine looking Tesla with 160K miles, for $5K.
Is that a great deal, or is that an idiots deal?
Without known the details of usage and charging, one thing is known: it's a Very Risky deal.
The battery in the 13-year old pristine looking Tesla with 170K miles may have 75% left, or it may have 35% left.
There are many real life factors.
Imho, getting a replacement battery would be extremely foolish, especially for a POS Model 3. Tesla won't even offer an extended warranty for a Model 3. For a Model, it's a 3 year warranty, after that - thanks sucker!
Getting parts and repairs for a 10+ year old Tesla is one of those things that the very often rich (/well off) Tesla owners never ever talk about. They've often dumped the car after 3 to 5 years. Very few original Tesla owners keep their vehicles after 7 years. Imho, people must understand the demographics of a Brand/make/model, before they can make any decent informed decisions about the long term readability. Imho, Jaguar, Range Rover, BMW, and MB, are all great examples.


Fwiw, I stay with Energizer batteries.
Sorry, percentage cost wise, I don't see the alternatives making sense.
I guess many people never buy bread, a gallon of milk, or a gallon of gasoline?
Nor, have a cell phone bill, cable bill, electric bill, water/sewage bill, trash pickup bill, house/car property taxes, and so on.

 

Back about 150 years ago, I worked as a defense contractor for one of the beltway bandits that was eventually absorbed by SAIC, a bigger beltway bandit that few non-geeks have ever heard of.
This was before I obtained "honest work" in telecommunications.
SOME people refer to defense contractors as leeches, but I think that this is a horribly misunderstood and libelous insult....
Leeches actually serve a useful if widely misunderstood purpose in the medical field if only because they suck the excess blood that can exist in hospital for post-surgery patients. They are used in reducing swelling in tissues, and they promote healing by allowing freshly oxygenated blood to reach the newly traumatized area until normal circulation can be restored.

SO.....
A low-tech product that we built and sold happened to be replacement battery packs for marine instruments, built by....other defense contractors.
ONE of the MANY MANY reasons that military kit is so hideously expensive is that they steadfastly refuse to use COTS (or Commercial Off The Shelf) items when a more expensive non-standard tien can be developed and sold instead.
COTS is a four-letter word for defense contractors and the politicians that they pay to hire them.

Don't judge them too harshly.
They learned from the BEST!
Automotive manufacturers.

Because our management team actually had some vestigial sense of pride and patriotism we actually conducted lab tests to determine which batteries performed best in the environment that they would ACTUALLY be used in.
The world's oceans are COLD, once you get below the surface scum.
Temperatures range between 86 °(30 °C) at the sea surface to 30.2 °F or 30 °C - for those that use measuring systems preferred by developing nations.
I remember that I used to regularly see 29 °F inlet temps on two different submarines when we were under or near the ice pack, but that was before we discovered climate change.
We used "proprietary" battery discharge models, which is a fancy way of saying that we didn't have to 'show our work.' and in the environs that the battery packs would be used in a certain copper-top battery did marginally better than the others that we tested, BUT(!!!!) these batteries also exhibited a tendency to puke all over the battery holder during very long term use.
IYKYK.

As my President would day (on one of his 'good' days) "Here's the deal..."

Four months for a LITHIUM CR-1632 does not point to a 'battery' problem unless you bought a defective battery.
MY finely honed Spidey senses inform me that there's something else going on here.
Defective fob.
Purse storage causing a continuous pressing of one or more buttons.
Bad batch of CR-1632's.
A toddler.
SOMETHING.
We also tested the bunny brand of batteries, BTW and they were a LOT closer to the coppery topped cells than the Harbour Freight ones.
For the astute 'constant reader'.....yes.
We tested both alkaline AND lithium batteries and the results were fairly brand-consistent.

In other words....that graph is complete balloon juice, probably using hatred for a certain billionaire CEO with lots of yachts and a phallic space vehicle as a substitute for real-world testing - ot ANY testing.

Either way?
Math is still math.
Using that silly graph and presuming that the Bezos Brand lasted for four months and given the traditionally non-linear discharge rates that we have come to know and love from "Lithium?" button batteries......how long would a Duracell have lasted?

 

Yep, it can be hit-or-miss with the crap coming out of China, sometimes! The price of motor oil is now at the official "that's nuts" levels! I may have to renew our Costco membership so I can get the two 5-qt jugs of 0W-20 for $40!
In the summertime is when I replace all of our charcoal cabin filters and batteries in the key fobs and garage door remotes.

 

Gee and I thought 32 F was about 0 C.

Mike

 

is it possible to get a bad battery? i don't see any voltage checks

 

Walmart currently has SuperTech full synthetic 10k mile in all weights for $19.98 / 5 quart jug. Saw it yesterday while wandering around. Currently have 3 jugs already on the shelf, so I didn't buy any this time.....

 

I don't doubt you about the counterfeit rates on Amazon. But ...

I'm certain that Walmart gets those for under well $1.35. Heck, even overpriced Digikey will sell one to you for $1.30 ... plus their high handling-shipping fees. If you buy thousands at once, the price drips to under $0.75 each, with just a small increase in the shipping fee. And that is the most expensive CR1632 brand they sell.

Back when I was in the electrical product design industry, it became clear that the cost of the battery itself was an almost negligible portion of the single unit blister pack domestic retail price. The many costs of ordering, shipping, handling, warehousing, inventory control, distribution, shelf stocking, marketing, shrinkage, etc., and profit markups at each step along the way, vastly exceed the factory cost of the raw item. Batteries that would cost us multiple dollars each, individually card packaged at a nearby drugstore here, were carried on our product bill of materials at less than a dime apiece, delivered as a bulk-packaged full pallet to the factory making our products over there. That was when I left a bit over a decade ago. And economies of scale had caused the pallet prices there to fall over my decade of that work, even as their product quality and energy capacities improved, and as retail prices here rose.

A true lean reseller could get them to you much cheaper. Unfortunately, the incentives to 'cheapen' the supply chain a little bit more, undercutting and eclipsing the honest ones, are too pervasive.

 

You think so? I would definitely buy a 13-year old pristine-looking Tesla and make a fortune parting it out. The only model that old is the Tesla Roadster -- very difficult to find parts for.

 

He initially compares Dollar General "heavy duty" to Duracell "alkaline" cells. But doesn't mention that any comparison of old-fashioned "heavy duty", an improved version of even older-fashioned carbon-zinc cells, vs more modern alkaline cells, is an inherently unfair battle. The alkaline should always win, regardless of brand.

Then, "Both [brands] claim that no alkaline battery lasts longer. Obviously they both can't be right". Sorry, but he just didn't understand the marketing-ese. They can both be right: if they are essentially identical, than they other guy doesn't last longer. Neither directly claimed to last longer than the other guy.

After that, his battery capacity tests are very seriously simplified. He tests three different chemistries, only in a high drain constant current configuration, to an unspecified cutoff voltage. That just doesn't do justice to the different characteristics of these different chemistries, or to the very wide variety of loads presented by different devices. The lithium will always shine in high load cases with high cutoff voltages. And in low temperature conditions. The alkalines can actually match their capacities, at much lower cost, in some low load applications with relatively low cutoff voltages.

Some bad news is that these alkalines and 'heavy duty' cells commonly have lots of milliamp hours left over that some devices can still make very good use of, but are wasted with other common devices that just can't function at the reduced voltage. Flashlights can still run much longer on them, but are quite noticeably dimmed. The devices I was working on, like an increasing number of other modern devices, used switch mode power supplies that can scavenge considerably more energy from these cells before shutting down, leaving very little wasted chemical energy.

 

I worked with SAIC out of Huntsville, Alabama back in the day. They had some fairly advanced control and monitoring software for the time period.

Walmart has a new Mobile 1 0W20 for hydrids, 5 qts for $27. Regular for $26. The hybrid version is supposed to handle some of the side effects of thermal cycling you don't see in gas only engines. Pricing at Sams and Costco this weekend for normal 0W20 was $33 for 6 qts.

As far as coin batteries go, the online guys are selling poorly made replicas. Some might say replacing a $1 battery every 6 months is worth it but it does get old.

 

The life of CR1632s in my fob has been oddly inconsistent, even ones from the same pack. The history:

#1 Energizer came with car, lasted 2.82 years.
#2 Renata lasted 2.12 years
#3 Renata lasted 2.32 years until it failed to unlock doors by either method, from any distance
#4 Renata lasted only 0.44 years until dash display showed "KEY NOT DETECTED"
#5 Renata is still going at 0.94 years.

From this data I conclude that Energizer is better than Renata, and one of the Renatas was probably defective. They were all from the same string of blister-pack cards.

 

I had the same problem and bought a pack of them with a bunch of batteries for cheap.

Well they were cheap and did not last long.

So I ordered some rechargable ones.
Have not had a problem since first charge.