Photographers will appreciate: external charging is no longer needed! Battery overview with built-in charging connector

The sit­u­a­tion is known to every pho­tog­ra­ph­er: the cam­era bat­tery is dead, there is noth­ing to charge it with, but you need to shoot. Alter­na­tive­ly, there is charg­ing, but the near­est out­let is very far away. Of course 2–3 spare bat­ter­ies will help. But what to do when the spare bat­ter­ies run out? A bat­tery with a built-in charg­ing con­nec­tor will come to your aid. Cheap, capa­cious and con­ve­nient — Canon LP-E6 in my case. Let me tell you about him.

The prod­uct is sim­ple, so the review will be short.

Pack­ag­ing and appear­ance

A cheap card­board box, inside of which lies a plas­tic box with the bat­tery itself and a charg­ing cable

Unlike the mass of out­right clones, this bat­tery does not try to imper­son­ate the orig­i­nal. It fol­lows the gen­er­al lay­out of the Canon LP-E6 bat­tery exact­ly because oth­er­wise it would not fit in the bat­tery com­part­ment. Oth­er­wise, every­thing is its own — red col­or, rough plas­tic and — most impor­tant­ly — a built-in charg­ing con­nec­tor!

The Bat­max office that pro­duces it also offers a lot of oth­er bat­ter­ies, and every lit­tle thing for cam­eras too.

Please note that the orig­i­nal has a 13 watt * hour capac­i­ty, while the Bat­max 20.7

Micro-USB, of course, is bet­ter than noth­ing, but I would still like it to be more con­ve­nient in gen­er­al (and even more so when charg­ing “in the fields” and even more so) Type‑C. In the new ones, as I under­stand it, already type‑C, nev­er­the­less.

More recent bat­ter­ies for cam­eras with built-in charg­ing con­nec­tors from Bat­max already boast 3‑segment LED indi­ca­tors and a but­ton that turns them on. This is much more con­ve­nient, as you some­how can eval­u­ate how much the bat­tery is charged, and the charge lev­el of stored bat­ter­ies with­out insert­ing them into the cam­era.

In my case, the indi­ca­tion is the sim­plest red-green eye.

Pho­to bat­tery charg­ing test

The charg­ing cur­rent is small, only 0.5A, so you should not rely on fast charg­ing.

I don’t shoot much, and I have 2 oth­er spare bat­ter­ies, so I’ve only charged the Bat­max bat­tery about ten times in a year. So, tech­ni­cal­ly, the bat­tery is not new, but it’s also impos­si­ble to talk about some kind of inten­sive use that eats up bat­tery capac­i­ty. If the capac­i­ty dur­ing this time sank, then I am sure that it is quite insignif­i­cant.

So, let me remind you, they promise a very good capac­i­ty — 20.8 watt * hour at 13 watt * hour for a native bat­tery.

For those who are not in the know, here is a sim­ple expla­na­tion of how to cor­rect­ly cal­cu­late the bat­tery capac­i­ty and why it is wrong to cal­cu­late the capac­i­ty in mah. In the lat­ter case, the num­bers will jump strong­ly depend­ing on the volt­age. And if the last is unknown, then all these mah at all are mean­ing­less, because the same capac­i­ty of 3.7v and 12v bat­ter­ies expressed in mah will dif­fer by 3 times … But watt * hours are always the same, despite the bat­tery volt­age.

So, a year lat­er, 11 watt * hours are poured into the bat­tery. Of course, the real capac­i­ty is less, because there are still charg­ing loss­es. And in order to accu­rate­ly find out the capac­i­ty of the bat­tery for the cam­era, you would have to dis­as­sem­ble this bat­tery and sep­a­rate­ly mea­sure the capac­i­ty of each of the two li-ion cells includ­ed in it. Since I use the bat­tery and will use it, I have no inter­est in this. Such approx­i­mate fig­ures will suf­fice. Most impor­tant­ly, the capac­i­ty suits me quite well.

Gen­er­al impres­sions

The bat­tery with built-in charg­er for the cam­era is a real sal­va­tion. All you need now is a pow­er bank or a solar pan­el, there is no need to take a sep­a­rate charg­er with you. Now you can charge the bat­tery for the cam­era right in the car, on the go, in the coun­try — any­where. And the space occu­pied by a sep­a­rate charg­er can be use­ful for some­thing else. For exam­ple, two addi­tion­al bat­ter­ies will def­i­nite­ly fit.

The only thing worth not­ing is that some exter­nal charg­ers for pho­to bat­ter­ies will allow you to charge faster, with much high­er cur­rents. And, tech­ni­cal­ly, they can also be used on the go or “in the fields” since they have a type‑c input.

What­ev­er it is, I’m sat­is­fied. I don’t want to return to exter­nal charg­ers after buy­ing this bat­tery with built-in charg­ing, although I have 3 of these and 2 of them are mod­ern and fast. It is much eas­i­er to insert direct­ly into a block with USB out­puts (if you need a pow­er­ful one, here review 100w GaN charg­ing Ugreen)

By the way, if you often shoot “in the fields” and edit the footage in the same place, then for sure you will find it use­ful to review the most pow­er­ful pow­er bank with 100w and 220v out­puts, which will also pull a lap­top.

Where to buy and how to save

You can buy a bat­tery with a built-in charg­er for the cam­era in this store at aliex­press

You can also save on the pur­chase of this and oth­er goods with coupons and pro­mo­tion­al codes from my dis­count chan­nel in telegram, see the link to it below in the “about the author” block