Topic: Impact NPF-F975 / 722 First Battery test results.

[RobertNC]

EDITED:  Please read the whole thread.  Input would be greatly appreciated.  Further evaluation of the Impact/722 onboard charger on the second cycle looks solid now!:

INITIAL POST:

Impact NPF-F975 battey test results.

I normally run a  Sony NPF970.  Picked up the Impact as backup replacment.

After a full charge using the onboard 722 I got a max of 7.5 and the bar was only at about 70% on the battery meter icon.

My stock Sony NPF970 gives 8.2 after a full charge and shows just slight short of a full bar on the batter meter icon.

I set up the rig in a box and recorded near the TV to get some LED activity.  Maybe a better test would have been the stereo, but I wanted to watch Outlaw Josey Wales.  Normally at a  show I will turn the back light off except for an occasional check.  LED activity was lower than I would get a show.  Don't know which burns more, I would guess the LEDS, but I left the back light on.  Probably not much difference.  Notice how loud they make the commercials, LOL.  Plus I made a few phone calls etc.  Definitely some reasonably typical LED activity just not steady all the time like it would be at a show.

Everything else is the way I always run - the MG210s on phantom, mic in straight to 722, writing to INHDD only.

After 60 minutes:

Meter has retreated a little, I'm starting to lose the "V" on the end. 
Reading is down to 7.3

After 90 minutes:

I shut it down to imitate "real life".  90 minutes would be a little long for a set for the kind of shows I do.  I always turn my deck off between sets to let it cool down a little and save battery life.

Can't see much difference on the meter.
Reading is bouncing between 7.2-7.3

After a cool down started back up.  All times are given as total runtime.

After 120 minutes:

Meter is still about the same, still a little V left.
Reading is now sitting firm on 7.2

After 150 minutes:

Meter is down to at least 60%.
REading is now sitting firm on 7.1

After 180 minutes:

Meter is down to to the 50% line
Reading is now sitting firm on 7.0


Bewteen 180 and 200 MInutes:

Run down is steep and fast. 
At say 190 minutes, the meter is down to < 25%.
Reading is dropping down quickly to the upper 6 range.

At 200 minutes the reading is down bouncing aroung 6.5 and the unit auto-powers down.

Comments:

Observations:

The burn down on this battery looks a little different from what I see on the branded Sony.  It's not unusual to see the Sony drop down really quickly from the inital charge to say 7.9, gradually discharge at a little bit faster rate relative speaking compared to the Impact,  but then it really hangs tough for a long time in around the 7.6-7.4 range - the initial starting point of the impact.

Pros:

On the plus side, the Impact seems to run down pretty steadily at first. I feel reasonably sure that it would get though say a typical 2+ hour show.

Cons:

I'm not happy that the onboard does not seem to get a full charge in then Impact compared to the Sony.  Maybe a stronger external charger would juice it all the way.  BUt I;m too old to do festies. For my typical run of say 3 nights of a Dead Family show, charge speed is not an issue.  I have plenty of time between shows for the onboard charger to juice to full.

The 722 charge has never let me down before with the Sony, no interest in having to lug an external charger just to get full perforamnce out of a different battery brand. 

Also I can'remember walking out of a two act show, say an opener and Gov't Mule with a reading at as low as the 7.0 mark with the branded Sony.

The drop-off after 180 minutes was really hard and fast.

Other concerns:

I was in a frosty well AC'd environment, did not have my deck in a bag etc.  At a typical show my deck runs noticeably hotter. I seem to remember Li-Ion packs are negatively affected by thermal effects.  If that is true, this battery might really be a ringer at a typical show.

Misc Comments:

It is my understanding that Li-Ion batteries do not really benefit from an initial few discharge/recharge cycles. I may be way off base on that.  If so maybe the performance will improve after a few more uses.

The only time I've really run my Sony down was a Rapdog show im Charlotte.  The Sony was good for not only a solid near 3 hour show, but has enoug juice left to let me run playback with earbuds on the drive home.  After a 3 hour show, and a 4 hour drive home from Charotte on playback, I got pretty close to home, maybe with a half hour before the Sony ran down to auto shutoff. 

The Impact I might have pushing it to just to get through the show.

Final analysis:

I may be mistaken and that the battery will improve with a few cycles.  If not, as far as the Impact and the 722 charger combination, the results are hardly impressive. Good enough that I will take this battery as either the power source for an opening act segment only, or as a spare for th end of a long show.

But all in all, at least in my admittedly crude test, the Impact did not rival much less best the Sony. For right now, I'd use it as secondary or emergency back off, but the Sony remains the primary work horse for me.

[Brian Skalinder]

FWIW, I've had good experiences with the Impact batteries.  IME, the charger makes a BIG difference, whether li-ion, nimh, or another battery type.  Personally, I've never trusted the 722's on-board charger with any battery - the on-board charger has caused me problems too many times.  On the other hand, my Impact batteries (or Sony, for that matter) + a good external charger have proven very effective for me.

[RobertNC]

Yeah, I realize the charger is a factor which I why I emphasized that I am using the 722 on board charger exclsuivcely.

For the price differential, I would have been better off to just get another Sony. 

OF course this is predicated by on onboard 722 charging the Sony batteries being made now the same as the Sony batteries being made when I got it, which is no guarantee.  So I guess that begs the question suppose I replace the Sony, which I will need to do sometime with another Sony. only to find I now need an external charger anyway?  Time will tell I suppose.

But having had solidly reproducible, consistent power from the Sony/722 charge combo for the last year and half, I can't say the onboard charger has ever been a problem.  But at least for the two pieces of of the actual gear in my hands, the Impact/722 did not deliver the same.

[OFOTD]

Thanks for the testing and results.  Alot of good info.

[RobertNC]

Thanks for the testing and results.  Alot of good info.

Is it really though?  Brian's comments got me thinking further.  I'm gonna make a almost certain probable guess that Brian has been running a  722 longer than me.  He has had problems with the onboard charger witha range of batteries.  Mine works perfectly with the Sony, but not the Impact.  Which begs a couple of questions.

Did SD see that they had some probelms with the onboard charger and change it at some point, optmized and QC'd specifically to the Sony.

So does Brian have a SD722 "B" for example while I have a SD722 "C".

Or is it something else.  As I'm sure anyone on the board who has engineering/manufacturing production experience like myself can tell, many products are made with a consistant "core" set of components but often some of the peripherals rotate in and out fairly often based on sourcing, just-in-time inventory maintenance, sometimes failures of JIT inventory maintenance where the company has to get something in fast etc etc.

Now I think we would all agree the production value on the SD&xx series is high.  If they change parts no doubt each source passes some kind of QC first.  But it's still not the "same" part.

So my question is, tapers, sure a lot of us run these things but we are not a huge market either.  Any ideas what the total market on the SD  series is?  Because if it is below a ceratin level, then it may be reasonable to assume that yes, there may be a at most a few "flavors" of SD722 floating around like "A,B,C,D".

But if the market is big enough, there could also be so many slight variations on the 722 out in the field where and for whatever they are being used for, that if a bunch of us stacked a set of SD722s we would all have "SD722"s and there might not be many, or even one, that were in fact "identical" in terms of what's inside. 

At the end of the day I think all we may be able to say for sure is "I can't really tell you buy a Sony not and Impact, I can only tell you how it the specific battery behaved on my specfic box", and other people can tell you the opposite experiences of their own.

At this point I would reiterate the obviouys - you just have to be sure to test whatever you have before you take it out the first time, and I would also add, after "a full charge" if it does not show a full charge on the unit, you need to probably keep an eye on and have a plan on switching it out after say a set or an opening act.

I think I will run the Impact Friday at Penn's Landing for Levon Helm just to see how different it is in the field.  But the the Sony will definitely go in before Phil Lesh cranks up.

[F.O.Bean]

cycle your battery 5-6 times. that *Should* yield better runtimes

[RobertNC]

I will try that, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that priming applies to Nickel based batteries but not Lithium.  Also my Sony has performed the same always from day 1.  Could have been "factory primed", but again, I don't think it applies to Li-Ion.

Will not hurt to try - I'll put it through another couple of cycles this week and report back the results.

[F.O.Bean]

I will try that, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that priming applies to Nickel based batteries but not Lithium.  Also my Sony has performed the same always from day 1.  Could have been "factory primed", but again, I don't think it applies to Li-Ion.

Will not hurt to try - I'll put it through another couple of cycles this week and report back the results.

I have done BUTT LOADS of research on batteries, and I have always read the exact same thing. BUT, when I bought my 722 from SS June 2006, Parker told me to cycle the batts. Well, I cycled the ones she sent me 5-6 times, and lo and behold, they are the ONLY 2 batteriesd that are still alive

I never cycled the other batts and sure enough, theyre dead. could be a coincidence or could be luck, but I know what worked for me!

[RobertNC]

OK just got home from work, and took a look at things.  After another full recharge, on the SD722  I am now showing 8.2 and a Full Bar on the battery meter!!!!   

Happy day!

I doubt one cycle could be a real "priming effect"?

Maybe a being a new battery it just needed a single discharge cycle to reset the "smart" charge digital circuit?

Just hooked it all back up for another test, will report later.

EDIT:

It;s now later.  Will not do the blow by blow this time.  Only will report that now at 240 minute mark I and seeing 7.3 and still clearly greater than 50% on the meter.  Gonna shut it down, feeling pretty good and don't think another round of severl discharges are even needed.

Happy now to see performance comparable to the Sony.

Still my only hypothesis that I think might hold water was the internal smart charge limiter required a reset wjich happened presumably on the first discharge cycle.

It was an interesting experiment.  Would love to hear any other opinions on what I observed between the two tests.

[boojum]

This from Wikepedia:

"A unique drawback of the Li-ion battery is that its life span is dependent upon aging from time of manufacturing (shelf life) regardless of whether it was charged, and not just on the number of charge/discharge cycles. So an older battery will not last as long as a new battery due solely to its age, unlike other batteries. This drawback is not widely published.[15]

At a 100% charge level, a typical Li-ion laptop battery that is full most of the time at 25 degrees Celsius or 77 degrees Fahrenheit will irreversibly lose approximately 20% capacity per year. However, a battery stored inside a poorly ventilated laptop may be subject to a prolonged exposure to much higher temperatures than 25 °C, which will significantly shorten its life. The capacity loss begins from the time the battery was manufactured, and occurs even when the battery is unused. Different storage temperatures produce different loss results: 6% loss at 0 °C (32 °F), 20% at 25 °C (77 °F), and 35% at 40 °C (104 °F). When stored at 40% - 60% charge level, these figures are reduced to 2%, 4%, 15% at 0, 25 and 40 degrees Celsius respectively.

Under certain temperature conditions, the batteries have a tendency to become damaged and can sometimes never fully recharge again. In certain situations where the temperature is too cold (below the recommended battery temperature) the battery will still hold its charge but cannot be recharged as a result of the cold temperature. This is most common in smaller batteries such as cellular phones and handheld devices.

As batteries age, their internal resistance rises. This causes the voltage at the terminals to drop under load, reducing the maximum current that can be drawn from them. Eventually they reach a point at which the battery can no longer operate the equipment it is installed in for an adequate period.

High drain applications such as powertools may require the battery to be able to supply a current of (15 h-1)C - 15/hour times "C" - the battery capacity in Ampere hours, whereas MP3 players may only require (0.1 h-1)C (discharging in 10 hours). With similar technology, the MP3 battery can tolerate a much higher internal resistance, so will have an effective life of many more cycles.[16]

Li-ion batteries can even go into a state that is known as deep discharge. At this point, the battery may take a very long time to recharge. For example, a laptop battery that normally charges fully in 3 hours may take up to 42 hours to recharge. Or the deep discharge state may be so severe that the battery will never come back to life. Deep discharging only takes place when products with rechargeable batteries are left unused for extended periods of time (often 2 or more years) or when they are fully discharged so often that they can no longer hold a charge. This makes Li-ion batteries unsuitable for back-up applications where they may become completely discharged.

A stand-alone Li-ion cell must never be discharged below a certain voltage to avoid irreversible damage. Therefore all Li-ion battery systems are equipped with a circuit that shuts down the system when the battery is discharged below the predefined threshold.[12] It should thus be impossible to "deep discharge" the battery in a properly designed system during normal use. This is also one of the reasons Li-ion cells are rarely sold as such to consumers, but only as finished batteries designed to fit a particular system.

When the voltage monitoring circuit is built inside the battery (a so-called "smart" battery) rather than the equipment, it continuously draws a small current from the battery even when the battery is not in use; furthermore, the battery must not be stored fully discharged for prolonged periods of time, to avoid damage due to deep discharge.

Li-ion batteries are not as durable as nickel metal hydride or nickel-cadmium designs and can be extremely dangerous if mistreated. They are usually more expensive.

Li-ion chemistry is not as safe as nickel metal hydride or nickel-cadmium, and a Li-ion cell requires several mandatory safety devices to be built in before it can be considered safe for use outside of a laboratory. These are: shut-down separator (for overtemperature), tear-away tab (for internal pressure), vent (pressure relief), and thermal interrupt (overcurrent/overcharging).[12] The devices take away useful space inside the cells, and add an additional layer of unreliability. Typically, their action is to permanently and irreversibly disable the cell.

Approximately 1% of Li-ion batteries are the subject of recalls.[17] .

The number of safety features can be compared with that of a nickel metal hydride cell, which only has a hydrogen/oxygen recombination device (preventing damage due to mild overcharging) and a back-up pressure valve."

[F.O.Bean]

that was explained to em when I bought my 722 from SS back in 2006, roughly anyway And yet another reason why I use NIMH batteries

[mmedley.]

Glad you got it all figured out. I use the Impacts (keep 2 of them charged) exclusively and have never had a problem. I have a Sony 6600 in the bag as well as the stock 4500mah battery as back-ups. Mine have never exhibited what yours did. I bet it is fine. The Impacts blow the Sony's out of the water. Much better IMO.


Edit:

...but if you still think they might be faulty (not impossible) they have a 1YR warranty.

[F.O.Bean]

link to the Impact batts?

[mmedley.]

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/465330-REG/Impact_NPF975_NP_F975_Lithium_Ion_Battery.html

[orechall]

I have had no issues with the lenmar 7800s picked up a couple of those off of thomas distrubuting and dont have the issue with the pins coming out like I did in my impacts