Batteries for a ZebraLight H51

Operating Voltage Range: 0.7V – 2.5V
Battery: One 1.5V AA (NiMH, lithium or alkaline). 14500 Li-ion batteries are not supported. Batteries are not included in the package.

The manufacturer does not state anything about batteries except for above.

..but if it's on you tube…

So far so good with lithium Energizers for my H31. Battery Junction.com

I don't have the H51 but I have the H31 which uses a CR123 battery instead. I think though they use the same LED(according the specs). I have used energizer lithium CR123s and energizer lithium photo CR123s. I didn't really even consider the difference in how long they would last. They did however both seem to function equally well in the light. I wonder what the difference is between the two besides expense.

I think the difference between lithium and alkaline batteries is that,
a) Lithium batteries last a bit longer
b) Alkaline batteries don't put out as much near the end of the life of the battery, in other words in the beginning you're getting full output but the output exponentially goes down as use continues. I think lithium batteries keep more of a constant output. Could be wrong though.

I do know that CR123 batteries have some sort of system that keeps the output steady and once the output falls below a certain amount they just don't work anymore. That's not very helpful for AAs though. They just keep putting out, but not as much.

Maybe that has something to do with the H51 being "optimized" for alkaline batteries. Maybe it compensates for the lower output?

I suppose this question would most easily be answered by contacting zebralight directly.

L91 lithium energizer is the best one.
2/3 of the alkaline weight and ca 3000mAh capacity.
Works perfect in very low temperatures also.

I think I figured out the "optimized" for alkalines thing. Someone pointed out the .7-2.5v operating range. That makes perfect sense, because during use the AAs don't put out constant voltage. The light is meant to be able to run on AA alkalines because of this. I think you could use either alkaline or lithium (but not rechargeable) per your preference but lithiums will last longer.

EDIT: I also looked on the H31 specs and it mentions nothing of any operating voltage range. I suppose because it's unnecesary for lithiums. So the H51 seems to be specifically built to be able to work well with either alkalines or lithiums.

I am not saying that what the guy on YouTube said was right…but it raised questions for me. And really…I thought a battery was a battery…but obviously they are not…

I will probably just go with the Ultimate Lithiums for now I guess. Unless anyone would say that the eneloops are better?

I just sent an email to Zebralight inquiring as to which battery is better in terms of light output and battery life, the L91 Ultimate Lithium or the eneloops…so maybe they will get back to me soon…

Supposedly the L91s are 3000Mah and the eneloops are 2000Mah so I'd assume the L91s would be your best bet. Check out that website someone else listed above. I'll definitely be buying from them. You can compare capacity of the different batteries too.

The reason people use the Eneloops in these things is because the SC51 and H51 circuit is optimized for that, and Eneloops are low-self-discharge Nimh batteries that hold their charge a long time, have a relatively high capacity, and can be recharged many times, so operating costs are low. Eneloops are an extremely good way to run most AA devices.

While the non-rechargeable lithium L91 or L92 are lighter weight and higher capacity, they are expensive, around $2 each, and give a much higher operating cost because they are not rechargeable.

Regardless of battery type you use, always use the tailcap lock-out feature on that Zebralight when you put it in your pack or pocket. Just unscrew the tailcap far enough until the light won't turn on.
They are notorious for turning themselves on when in storage or in the pocket, thus running the battery dead and you don't know it until you need it and it's dead.

Thanks Phillip and Tom.

I am just going to order 4 of the eneloops with a charger and some of the Ultimate's too…if I like using the eneloops once I use the lithiums, I will just stay with them. I am sure that I will be able to find a use for the eneloops regardless…

As far as the light coming on…I had read about that. It also seems like the button has been recessed a bit into the light so it does not happen as easily. But either way, I will keep it in mind.

Off subject a little bit…

For those of you that have the H51 with the clip…how well does the clip work when compared to the headband. The reason I was looking at the Fenix in the beginning is because I wanted a light to clip to my hat/pack so that I could do away with the headband.

I don't like the Eneloops because they have less capacity than regular NiMH

They modified the chemistry to reduce the leakage, but "there's no free lunch"

Regular NiMH batteries lose something like 1% to 4% of their charge per day

I think the discharge depends on temperature or maybe there's disagreement about the rate

Tom, thanks for that lockout feature input. I never knew about that. I suppose because I never read the instructions or had enough common sense to figure it out on my own.

I do have a story to tell about that though. I awoke one night to find my H31 on full 220lm setting turned on in my sleeping bag. The only reason I noticed it is because the entire light was HOT to the touch, and I mean hot! It was hot enough to cause me to wake up anyway.

EDIT to answer Chad's question: I tried the clip on my H31 and I found that I prefer the headband. I had it clipped to my shoulder strap on my pack and just couldn't get used to it not pointing where I looked. It just felt too awkward for me. I do like the idea though. As far as lighting the trail, it did just fine with that. Maybe I'll try again some day, it could be worth the weight savings.

They modified the chemistry to reduce the leakage, but "there's no free lunch"

Thanks Jerry….I am curious if anyone else can comment on your response.

Phillip,

I would like to clip it the bill of my hat/visor. If this works well it should function the same as a headlamp. But I was interested in the comments that others have made about clipping the light mid torso for a better night hiking experience. Due to the design of this light it seems like it would worked well clipped vertically to a strap or something.

Anyway, I can't wait for it to get here now…it's crazy to get so excited about a flash light and some batteries… :0

Glad to help, Phillip!

With any Zebralight, and a limited battery supply, I'd consider locking that light out a requirement. The switch just isn't reliable.
You are by no means the only one that happened to. It's an extremely common occurrence.
The manufacturer knows about it, but never has changed the switch in those models. They just pretend it's not a problem. In the newer(and larger) lights, they have attempted to fix it with a bigger bezel, but problems are still seen.

"Optimized" is a great marketing word to use, because it can mean almost anything.

L91 lithium primary batteries have 3 to 4 times the energy density of a normal alkaline battery, so they will keep the LED going for an extremely long time. Plus, they work fine at low temperatures. They are lighter in weight. There is that high cost, though.

If you were doing a cold night race, then those might be the best choice of battery. On the other hand, if you do lots of those races, you may want to drop back to the rechargeable types in order to beat the cost.

The problem with so many rechargeables is that you have to recharge them properly. If they are improperly recharged, like way too fast, then they will become "funky." They still work. They still hold a charge. But the self-discharge rate increases, and that reduces the amount of light hours that you get. They will need recharging more and more often, and finally they will just act "sick."

So, I maintain a stock of different batteries here, L91, rechargeable, alkaline, etc. I pick the correct one off the shelf before each different kind of trip, and I do not carry spares.

I have the H501, which is almost the same as the H51. I cut the weight of the head strap by sewing a Croakies eyeglasses retainer strap on mine.

–B.G.–

"So, I maintain a stock of different batteries here, L91, rechargeable, alkaline, etc. I pick the correct one off the shelf before each different kind of trip, and I do not carry spares."

This has become my plan I think…

Although, I will probably still carry a spare…I would hate to be without light when I needed it…

"The problem with so many rechargeables is that you have to recharge them properly. If they are improperly recharged, like way too fast, then they will become "funky." They still work. They still hold a charge. But the self-discharge rate increases, and that reduces the amount of light hours that you get. They will need recharging more and more often, and finally they will just act "sick.""

I bought the eneloop batteries off of Amazon (same place I got the actual light…lots of places are sold out on those lights…) Anyway, when I was reading through the comments/reviews on the eneloop batteries I came across what sounded like an intelligent review, and in that review, the actual charger for the eneloop batteries was not favorable. Here is what he said about the charger:

"The Sanyo MQN06 4-cell charger (included in this and many other eneloop packages) is a big let-down. Here's what I don't like about this charger:
– It charges in pairs only. This is very inconvenient for appliances that take odd number of cells. If you try to charge an exhausted cell together with a half-full cell, the charging process stops as soon as the second cell is full, which means the first cell is still half-empty.
– The charging current is very low: 300mA for AA cells, 150mA for AAA cells. That means it take about 7 hours to recharge a pair of exhausted eneloop AA cells.
– If you leave a pair of charged cells in an unplugged MQN06, there is a leakage current of 0.5mA. This means a loss of 12mAh per day. In other words, a set of 2000mAh cells will become exhausted in about 5 months. That wipes out the 'low-self-discharge' benefit of eneloop cells."

So, I will just have to see how it goes. Sounds like I will need to wait on 2 of the batteries to both be fully depleted and then charge them at the same time. Then once they are done I should remove them from the charger…

"- If you leave a pair of charged cells in an unplugged MQN06, there is a leakage current of 0.5mA. This means a loss of 12mAh per day. In other words, a set of 2000mAh cells will become exhausted in about 5 months. That wipes out the 'low-self-discharge' benefit of eneloop cells."

That's simple to fix. Don't leave your batteries in the charger.

I've used all sorts of battery chargers for decades, so I have gotten a feel for what works and what doesn't.

Each different type of battery has different characteristics, and one of the most important is the optimum charge rate. As a ballpark figure, take one-tenth of the maximum output rate. However, a little slower than that is often fine. You can find some really fancy chargers that do all sorts of things. However, you won't get a tremendous increase in battery performance. Maybe a little. That fancy charger also carries a fancy price tag. Pretty soon you have defeated the whole cost savings of a rechargeable battery.

Rechargeables currently constitute fewer than half of all the batteries that I use.

–B.G.–

The lumen/ runtime info provided by zebralight was performed using eneloops.
The Maha chargers are apparently the best and let you check/ set the charge of the batteries.

Those Maha chargers are nice…but they are a little pricey…I will keep this charger in mind if I decide that I like the eneloop batteries better than buying all the lithium batteries…

I just got a mh c9000, yes it's a bit pricey, but I use only AA batteries, rechargeables, and have done so for over a decade. I was starting to hit issues with batteries draining really fast, turns out after running all of them through the refresh/renew cycle once or twice, some had low capacities.

I also picked up a 4 pack of maha powerex 2700 ma nimh, those are supposed to be about as good as the eneloop 2000 ma ones, haven't done the breakin charge on them so can't verify that, I'll use those on my next real backpacking trip and see how well they work, probably use two for the h51, two for camera.

Given a 4 pack of good rechargeable aa's costs 12 or so, I wouldn't say the 50 or so I paid for the recharger was that bad all things considered, the last one I got cost about 20 10 years ago and wasn't nearly as good.

the thing with these good rechargers is you can see what the actual charges going into the battery are, and I think that's worth it, especially for backpacking purposes where if your battery was only charged to 1800 ma, that's going to make a major difference.

The other place it really matters is when you put batteries inline, then the weakest defines what life all will give, and that's when actually know the charge/discharge rate of each one is very helpful.

One thing I did discover was that my energizer aaa rechargeables weren't even remotely close to the claimed rating. Most of my AAs were pretty close, except a few.

This is the best place from what I gather to pick this stuff up:

http://www.thomasdistributing.com/AA-AAA-C-D-9V-Chargers_c_644.html
http://www.thomasdistributing.com/Maha-Powerex-MH-C9000-AA–AAA-Battery-Chargerbr_p_134.html
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?154756-Maha-MH-C9000-Wizard-One-Charger

There's another brand out there that has really horrible reliability reviews, costs about the same, don't remember the name, maha seems to stand alone in terms of actually being worth buying.

I held off a bit, but realized you really get roughly what you pay for now with electronics now, these guys at least offer a 3 year warranty, and http://www.thomasdistributing.com apparently are a very reliable and service oriented source for this stuff.

I'm a cheapskate, and I thought that was easily worth it after cycling all my batteries a few times to see what they were actually having re capacity. I'd rather head out knowing my 2700 m a is actually running 2500 than buying brand new untested 2500 that actually ru n at 1800, which I have had happen with some new energizers.

http://www.thomasdistributing.com/Closeout-Special-GP-SMART-1-HOUR-FAST-POWERBANK-Battery-Charger_p_970.html

that's a good deal, no readout, but only costs 15 bucks, I'd get that as a backup charger if you want to be able to charge a bunch at once.

The h51 is great, it's as good as everyone here said, i also asked here first before getting a real headlamp, I was night hiking during this past winter with it once I realized that the high mid setting was plenty to do hiking in pitch black (each intensity level has two sub levels, high/low, so you can fine tune battery life/light), excellent life, great light spread, everything is exactly as described, a high quality unit. Unless you're hitting real cold, I don't see much reason for lithium, but each to their own. Sometimes this weight stuff gets a little out of hand in my opinion, this stuff is already light and powerful as is. The quality of the h51 is immediately obvious as soon as you use it, it's quite comparable to maha stuff in terms of how it's built, the feel and look put it above other stuff that is cheaper.

One thing people didn't really note re the zebralights like h51 is how totally cool it is to be able to point the light whereever you want with just a little roll of the light body, since it's a cylinder, it can point anywhere you want it to point. and it keeps pointing there, at least it has done so every night I've used it, I adjust it a lot depending if I'm going up, flat, or down on the trail. That's an amazing light. I still don't think the lumens for lcd is the same actual intensity that I got from say my minimag light, but the battery life and singe battery vs two so far outweighs that point that it doesn't matter.

Much to may amazement, the high low setting, ie, the 2nd lowest intensity, is in fact plenty to do night camp stuff with, you can easily pitch a tent and everything, cook, etc using only that, hard to believe until you actually do it. I think I could almost read with that setting, if I used reading glasses maybe.

Oh, I've been using duracell 2450 nimh in the h51, I can't give any life estimate because I didn't do enough night hike hours to use up the charges, and I also did the full charge/refresh/drain breakin cycle on the duracells when I got the maha unit. Has to be close to 10 hours at this point, don't know though. I think those ran at about 2300 or 2400 m a when tested.

I use the Lacrosse as do many others. Newegg puts Powerex batteries on a deep sale once in a while . You can set up a price alert . The deal usually appears as a Shell Shocker, which you can sign up for.

I couldn't remember, lacrosse, right, that's the one to avoid. Costs more than the maha, the batteries are more closely spaced, which leads to heating/overheating issues, and the warranty was only a year. Plus I read way too many people who said it had died right after the warranty period.

I pay very close attention to warranties, they are short because they have to be short, that means it reflects a failure rate that makes it impossible statistically to offer the 3 year warranty maha offers, that to me is pretty significant when paying this much, I do not want a 50 dollar brick of useless plastic. As with hard disks, if they could offer a longer warranty, they would.

From what I gathered, lacrosse has quality control problems, and given it actually costs more than the maha, which I could not find any real negatives on at all except that the light when on is really bright (it is). Some people reported a whine from the maha, but I cannot hear it, and I have sensitive ears. Just because these have higher failure rates, the web was filled with reports, enough to make it a non option for me at that price, doesn't mean that they all fail, it just means they tend to fail enough to make it a bad option in my opinion. One case where I could find no real argument for the lacrosse, which to me should be priced around 20 less than the maha to make that worth it.

So, I have ordered the eneloop batteries with the charger. If I were to order the MH-C9000 to use in place of the stock charger what should be the first thing I would do with the batteries on the intelligent charger?

It looks like there is a refresh and analyze option and even a break in option.

(Sorry for all the questions…)

the maha has three main modes:
1. charge – that's for when you have done the other modes already, I think they recommend 10 charges or so, then:
2. refresh / analyze – drain/recharge – this gives you the actual capacity of the battery at the end, each slot has its own logic circuit. It's useful by the way to mark the battery somehow, or tape onto it, the actual charge it carries.
3. breakin, this is a very very slow drain/charge/drain/charge. Takes about 39 hours. For new batteries, or batteries that have not been charged in several months.

One thing it's important to remember is that the heat the batteries generate also is a charge, and that's why you have to see what the discharge of the battery is to find its capacity, that's how the maha does it, and probably most other comparable units. Well, I couldn't find any comparable units, but if there were some, that's how they would do it too.

The manual it comes with is easy to read and understand, and it explains all the key terms quite clearly, I found it well written.

Some people complained that the maha has only one screen, so you have to cycle the readout for each battery, but to me that's just admitting that those people have no life, ie, they want to sit reading each screen, it is very easy to switch between battery readouts on the maha, there's a button you push.

In normal mode it just shows the info for each battery then switches to the next slot, then you can click quickly between them, but really it's not a big deal, you stick them in, and wait for it to finish.

I'd avoid the quick charge stuff, that is supposed to be bad for the batteries, not sure about the enerloops, those might be different. The defaults maha uses are fine for most purposes. Remember it wont' start processing a slot until you tell it what you want to do, it's a matter of just clicking for ok. The long one, breakin, requires you enter the theoretical rated capacity as well per battery.

It also has a drain mode.

My best answer is read the reviews at Amazon on both the current Lacrosse and earlier models. Many of the reviews are by engineers. My Lacrosse is 6 years old and I recharge batteries about every 3 days for many devices.. If the Lacrosse reads null, I goose the cell with a cheap Energizer charger which usually bumps it up to about 194. If it shows red on the Energizer meaning unchargeable, I then put a bit of saliva on both sides of the cell and it suddenly turns green. Then back to the Lacrosse. Eneloops and similar Sony's I relegate to low draw apps. The Powerex handle things like Nikon Speedlights which are massive battery hogs. So I'd say read hard and long. I think Roger Caffin may know the LaCrosse. He knew it instantly a few years back when I raised a technical question about it. By the way the new Lacrosse seems to have a whole new circuit board.

"One thing it's important to remember is that the heat the batteries generate also is a charge"

Please explain.

Batteries have internal resistance. The better batteries have very low internal resistance. Current passing through that resistance generates heat whether it is power going in or going out. If a battery is no longer generating heat, then there is no longer any current going in or out. That is one way that a charger can tell when to quit pumping charge.

–B.G.–