Consumer Reports Muddies the Water

I came across an interesting article recently in Consumer Reports about batteries-specifically battery life. I had hoped that it might clear up some questions we (and our customers) have about battery life. Unfortunately, it did just the opposite.

In a nutshell, the article came to the conclusion that battery performance was a function of the power drain of the device in use. It seems that a well designed and manufactured battery would have superior performance across the board, but that is not the case.

Why should one brand of battery give better results in a digital camera and another battery do better in a portable cd player. The magazine fails to address this basic question.

The number one use for our battery customers is in wireless microphones. There are fewer high drain devices using batteries and rarely is there a case when so many people might be impacted by poor battery performance. Consumer reports didn’t address wireless mics (not really a consumer device), but a lot of their conclusions are still worth considering.

One of their most interesting findings was that the performance of some generic (house brand) batteries was good. In fact, they rated the Kirkland Brand from Costco to be a better value (peformance and cost) than a number of national brands.

They also went out of their way to recommend that you always use the battery a manufacturer recommends with that device. It has always struck us as odd that Shure ships their wireless mics with Duracell CopperTops even though the Duracell Procell is what the market to the pro audio market.

It would be interesting to run a test of the Kirkland brand in a wireless mic. At a cost of $.20 each in volume, a real cost savings is a possibility. Maybe we’ll set up a test.

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