Rechargeable Battery actual charge holding capacity low?

[6pack]

Just yesterday I recharged 4 GP 2200mah rechargeable batteries to their full capacity as shown in LaCrosse charger. I saw that they charged to only around 1200mah and then went full. 2 of them charged to only around 900-1000mah :S

So when I put them into my digicam after few minutes I got change batteries notification even without firing a single shot. All I did was delete old pics in card slot in that interval.

I thought batteries might be old (more than 1 yr old), so put 4 new lacrosse 2600mah rechargeable batteries to charge. These did not charge more than 750-1500mah before I saw the Full on the lcd panel. (Just happened to notice 2 batteries become full after 750maH of charging).

Question is, do these NiMh batteries actually charge to the full rated capacity mentioned on the batteries? I also read somewhere that these batteries discharge at rate of 2% per day compared to the hybrid ones which discharge at around 1% a month I think.

Also should i throw away these junk chinese batteries and get the eneloop ones?

 

[adder]

well if they are fakes then yes,they are most likely NI-CD rebadged to NI-MH.

get orginal sanyo eneloop or sony blue cycle energy batteries.
have used sonys both blue and green cycle energy batteries,they perform as expected.even the green cycle energy batteries has around 50 to 60% charge after 7 to 9 months.where as the blue cycle energy does hold charge even after a year.

BTW below are the performance curves of sony blue cycle vs sanyo eneloop ,as one can see the sony has a slight edge.

 

[HailStonE]

Your problem is actually with the manner in which LaCrosse BC900 checks the charge hold, while charging the batteries... If the batteries are not recharged for some time then they will not be fully charged by the charger... You need to refresh the batteries & they will get to near max capacity... Why this happens is still a mystery to me. But since this happened to my new Eneloop batteries as well, where it was charging them to ~1000mAh only... I refreshed the batteries & they charged fully. Even LaCrosse batteries were not charging fully initially but only after refresh...

Another thing..

You will also notice that sometimes it refuses to charge batteries telling you "null" on the screen so that you would believe that the batteries have gone bad. This holds valid even for new batteries as well.. Again its the charger acting up... Just charge the batteries in any regular charger for 30 mins & then you will see that LaCrosse now accepts the batteries which it had found bad...

There is nothing actually wrong with the charger per se but it only checks electrical pulses....There is no way to check the inside of battery which is only chemicals or to verify its actual capacity... So its not Fool proof in these thing.. This is the only explanation I can give..

 

[6pack]

Thanks both of you guys

Will try refreshing the current batteries. If problem persists will get the sony blue cycles from a shop or ebay.

 

[archish]

Might be a dud battery. Getting good quality NiMH is scarce is India atleast

Get Eneloop atleast they last long enough