DAB and batteries

timestar

I have recently bought a portable, battery-powered DAB radio for using in the bathroom. It uses 4 AA batteries and is used for maybe an hour a half each day. At present it is "eating" a set of batteries a week. Having Googled this I see that DAB does use significantly more power than conventional FM radios. Has anyone tried using rechargeable batteries, especially the hybrio type I have read out?

wanye

what batteries were you using before? duracells or just cheap ones?

nimh or hybrio batteries are the way forward, especially for high power kit that drains them quickly (cameras, mp3 players, etc)

timestar

Duracell Ultra.

randomtask_2

That doesn't sound right. 30 mins a day is 3.5 hours a week. 4 AAs should certainly last longer than that, particularly Duracells and modern DAB radios claim much longer battery life than that (like 10 times as much).

I'd look into exchanging/refunding the model as it sounds faulty.

wanye

if its getting through them in a week, then yes. get rechargeables.
get (at least) two sets and make sure the set not in use is always fully charged.

unrich

Old analogue radios did a simple job of taking the audio pretty much straight off the radio signals, SW/MW you can listen on a crystal radio without any batteries at all to a strong station. FM is a bit more complicated but still doesn't need much power to run the circuits.

DAB requires the signal to be decoded and changed from digital compressed to analogue. This takes computer power. Computer power takes electrical power.

My good old analogue Roberts radio will do about 50 hours on 2500mAh rechargeables (two of them).

My new Roberts DAB radio will do about 8-10 hours on 6 2500mAh batteries. Thats 1/5th of the time from 3 times the batteries.

DAB eats batteries.

Also at low volumes on earphones the DAB hiss is unbearable. All the noise from the circuits.

I listen to DAB on mains in rooms.
I switch back to FM/MW using headphones at low volumes on battery.

tweeter

I found charging up batteries in my BT Diverse phone, the batteries lasted longer than using a Uniross charger.

My old Motorola mobile fm radio, gets better results than my Sony Dab Walkman radio, doh!