How many times can NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) batteries be recharged?
The official word from the manufacturers is “500 to 1000 times”. In real life, this means “a LONG time.” Unlike NiCAD batteries which seem to lose capacity with each charge, I rarely see a drop with my NiMH batteries, though of course they too will eventually konk out, but only long after you’ve saved hundreds and hundreds of dollars over buying (and filling land fills with) alkaline disposable batteries. Generally speaking, you should get a good 2 to 3 years from your NiMH batteries before they stop holding a charge. Again, after 2 years, they will have clearly paid for themselves many times over, so don’t worry about it, and just use the opportunity to get some new higher capacity batteries anyway since there will generally be a bump in capacity at least once a year (when I first bought my own NiMH AA they were at 1600 mAh; now they’re at 2700 mAh!) This doesn’t mean that batteries 3 years or older won’t work, but they might simply be more useful in non-critical applicationsn (I use
