There are now rechargable Li-ion batteries in AA size, at 1.5 volts.

Having become habituated if not addicted to the use of a GPS receiver on BWCA and other trips, the Li AA batts would seem to offer a distinct advantage over NiMH or alkaline batts. My Garmin 64SX goes through a lot of these on a multi-day trip and that is irritating and burdensome. Has anyone had experience with these newer Li-ion AA batteries? Any recommendations?

AA Li-ion batts at Amazon

I have long been a fan of rechargeable NI-MH batteries but have not used rechargeable lithium batteries. I use non-rechargeable lithium batteries in two trail cams that I have and they are worth every penny.

I did a little research and came across the article below, it seems like they are good short term, but suffer greatly over repeated charge cycles.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-rechargeable-batteries/

Mike

We have only just started using them in some devices around the house a couple months ago. So far so good but don't have long term data. We are using the ones from Pale Blue that can just be charged with a USB-C cord. I like that they don't need yet another special charger. They do sell a 4-way splitter with the set, but the whole little kit is small and lightweight and I can recharge them from a powerbank while on trail.



Pale Blue Batteries

I bought the EBL Li-ion batts with charger so we'll see how they behave. I'm encouraged by the promise of holding 1.5 VDC output through the discharge period, which should help my GPS receiver, which rapidly drops to critical batt levels when using NiMH batts. Will report back.

The EBL AA Li-ion batteries came mostly discharged, so I charged them overnight. The charger reportedly can handle any number of batteries up to the max of 8, which is nice. Plugged two into my GPSMAP 64sx yesterday at 5 PM and selected max screen brightness and pulled up the map page. Left it running all night. This morning, still shows full charge! Although showing full charge is to be expected since/if the Li-ion output is a steady 1.5 VDC until exhaustion, this is still way better battery life than any NiMH battery experience with this GPS. I give these batts and charger a preliminary thumbs up. I'm going to leave it running until they crap out - will report back.

MrEarl56: "... showing full charge is to be expected since/if the Li-ion output is a steady 1.5 VDC until exhaustion ..."

Seems that I would rather it display some drop in charge level at some point so that I'd know to replace/recharge the batteries, rather than show 100% one minute and then suddenly quit working on me during travel and leave a gap in current tracking data, etc.

The batts made it 16 hours - again, far better than any NiMH batts I've used. The end was sudden, but I think I can live with that and work around it by keeping a pair of fully charged batts in the thwart bag or even my PFD..