my mind gets all bent trying to calculate run times from watt hours?
NOLA have you pushed that batt to its limit? how many hrs does it yield?
those do look nice, light and plenty stealthy for me cause ill be flying the 460's anyways
also how is the cycle life on these babies?
All day at a festival generally means at least 10 hours for a day. I think it will last longer though. I have just bought a used Power Runner for the same purpose. I don't know anyone that's anal enough that they'd run their recorder all day long just to run the batteries down in order to say...yeah, it last 15 hours vs. 16 hours...and then during a festival actually time it so that you know you're at the 14.5 hour mark and ready to change.
Rather, what you want to do is have options for hot swapping. I think the best situation is to have one of these ultra long life batteries AND a nice collection of the cheap energizer 2500 mah rechargeables.
Yeah, it would be nice to have those Powerex's, but frankly if they're that expensive then there's no doubt in my mind that I'd go with one of these battery packs and just use the shorter life rechargeables as the standard for normal taping. These give plenty of life for a whole show, or just do what I do and swap a new set of rechargeables at each setbreak and then you never have to worry about running out of juice for a normal night when you're only taping one or two bands over the course of 3 or 4 hours recording time.
I think I have about 20 niMHs, so it's no big deal to keep a fresh set of batteries in my box. (Yeah, I know you're supposed to fully drain them every so often for max life...but that's not my goal during a show...i can worry about that at home.)
Finally, I rather like the external power option because I personally find it a pain in the arse taking the back cover off to change batteries all the time. The downside of the external power supply though is that I've had a situation where it came unplugged during a show, which caused a drop-out of course. But I've solved that by getting into the habit of positioning my gear inside my bag during the show that that can't happen...I suppose I could also use a small square duct tape applied durng the show if that ever became an issue.
HOpe this helps.