NI-MH battery and Li-ion battery

Rechargeable batteries have got a great progress in these few years, and now the Li-ion rechargeable battery is the most popular one. The Ni-MH batteries are most popular for its safety and no memory effects and are used in a great quantity years ago.

Let's compare Li-ion batteries to Ni-MH batteries and see what's made people choose Li-ion batteries instead of Ni-MH ones. First, take these 2 batteries below for example:

Name KODAK KLIC-8000 Battery NIKON EN-4 Battery Battery type LI-ION, Rechargeable Ni-MH, Rechargeable Dimension 52x28.7x14.5 mm 121.95 x 61.40 x 39.15 mm Net Weight 42.5g 236g Capacity 1600mAh 2200mAh

We can see clearly that, the volume and net weight of Ni-MH Nikon EN-4 battery are more than 4 times of the Li-ion Klic-8000 battery but the capacity of en-4 is only about 1.5 times of Klic-8000 battery.

All of these data can show that, Li-ion battery is much higher capacity comparing to the other batteries with the same volume. We can see that, all the mini size mobiles, cameras, laptops are all using Li-ion batteries. For the mini products require a smaller battery, and for the other batteries it will be won't offer enough power for the products' normal using.

As the Canon EOS 350D Camera is a mini one in the same kinds of cameras, and this camera choose NB-2LH battery for its power, though the capacity of this battery is only 1450mAh, but none of other type of batteries can fit its require of both mini volume and higher capacity.

Let's see another side of these two types of batteries. Ni-MH battery is much safer than the Li-ion ones. For so many years, there are no bombing events and recall events of NI-MH Digital Camera Battery such as Canon Digital Camera Battery, canon NB-1L battery, canon NB-2L battery, canon BP-511 battery, canon NB-5L battery, canon NB-4L battery, canon NB-5H battery but so many of Li-ion batteries such as Apple A1175 Battery, Apple PowerBook G4 Battery, Hp F4098A battery, dell Inspiron E1505 battery. APPLE Laptop batteries bombed and recalling, DELL laptop battery recalling, HP... and so on, all of these show the unstable factors of the Li-ion batteries.

The most different for the reason is that, the Li-ion battery is much more sensitive of temperature comparing to the NI-MH ones. And the electrochemical materials are easier being pollution by the metal ions impurities.

Charge and discharge: Over charge and over discharge can take irreversible hurt to both the Li-ion battery and Ni-MH battery. Both of these tow batteries are with quite little memory effects which almost can be ignored. So you needn't to do deep charge and discharge for these type of batteries frequently, please avoid over charge and over discharge, for laptop, an over discharged battery maybe make the laptop can't start though you have change the battery to a good one.