Poor Battery life on Smart Lunar rear light

[deckertim]

I have a Smart Rear light. Not sure if it is the half watt or the one watt one. However, I find the battery life to be very poor. I am using good quality 1,000 mah rechargeables and find that when I have the light on flashing it lasts less than 4 hours. Am I expecting too much? I like to use a rear light even during the day and often go for all day rides..
Has anyone else found this to be a problem?

 

[upsidedown]

I run a Smart 1/2 watt. It's on for just over two hours a day, I recharge the Duracells at the weekend but I suspect I could get two weeks out of them. Think you've either got dodgy batteries or maybe the charger is stopping too soon ?

 

[potsy]

R2 user here, which is 2 half watt in one unit and I get much more than 4 hours on flash with the same strength batteries as you, would definitely try putting new batteries in,
Had a similar problem with some Duracell AA's in the Hopes, just one of the 4 batteries was bad and the run times were severely reduced.

 

[2Loose]

I have a Smart 1/2W and a 1W, both will run steady on Duracell for over a month of commuting, so at least 15hours, probably more.

 

[Wobblers]

I've got several Smart 1/2 Watt lights - they all last for more than 20 hours on fully charged Uniross Hybrio batteries.

Most short run times are down to the batteries. The trick is to make sure that the batteries have been properly charged - and you need a good charger for that. A cheap battery charger will not fully charge the batteries, or (worse) overcharge them. Over time this causes the batteries to lose capacity. What battery charger are you using? I'd recommend a quality charger that is capable of charging single batteries rather than in pairs such as those by Maha.

 

[deckertim]

I've got several Smart 1/2 Watt lights - they all last for more than 20 hours on fully charged Uniross Hybrio batteries.

Most short run times are down to the batteries. The trick is to make sure that the batteries have been properly charged - and you need a good charger for that. A cheap battery charger will not fully charge the batteries, or (worse) overcharge them. Over time this causes the batteries to lose capacity. What battery charger are you using? I'd recommend a quality charger that is capable of charging single batteries rather than in pairs such as those by Maha.

Ok thanks everyone.
I have got some other batteries so I will try these. I also have tried charging them with two different types of charger. One is a Uniross, the other a well recommended Seven Day Shop one that charges individual cells.

 

[Moodyman]

Interesting - I was given an older Smart 3-LED light and whilst bright, it exhausted my 1000 MAH batteries within a week (10 x 1 hour commutes).

I used the same batteries in another 3-LED all last winter and only charged them twice between October and March.

I thought maybe batteries were faulty. Looks like the light uses more battery than others.