The 'I've found a bargain' thread

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Mate’s just spotted that Exped are selling the Megamat 10 for nearly half price. This is without doubt the comfiest air mattress I have slept on. Not one for longer hikes but if your car is nearby, it’s great. My 74 year old Mum said it was as comfy for her as a normal mattress, and I agree.

 
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Mate’s just spotted that Exped are selling the Megamat 10 for nearly half price. This is without doubt the comfiest air mattress I have slept on. Not one for longer hikes but if your car is nearby, it’s great. My 74 year old Mum said it was as comfy for her as a normal mattress, and I agree.

They are fantasitc. My dad said similar to your mum.

They also have a free repair service.

One of our 10+ year old ones developed a slow leak. I couldn't find it. I contacted Exped who got their UK agents to contact me and I just had to send it to them (I paid for postage). They tested it, found the leak, repaired it and returned it to me for free.
Can't do better than that.
 
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Ikea 'Ladda' batteries are genuine Panasonic Eneloops in a different wrapper, and much cheaper! £5 for 4 1900mah AAs.

My understanding is the lower capacity versions are a much better buy- vastly more recharge cycles, and they hold their capacity well. The higher capacity Ni-MH's loose a lot of their capacity in a surprisingly short number of cycles.
 
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Sorry, I don't quite get how you think £1.25 each is much cheaper than £1.17 each?

I have found no difference in the charge cycles between the 1900 and 2400mAh batteries to be honest - I do suspect some of the even larger ones.
 
Ikea 'Ladda' batteries are genuine Panasonic Eneloops in a different wrapper, and much cheaper! £5 for 4 1900mah AAs.

My understanding is the lower capacity versions are a much better buy- vastly more recharge cycles, and they hold their capacity well. The higher capacity Ni-MH's loose a lot of their capacity in a surprisingly short number of cycles.
Indeed, the IKEA Ladda are highly regarded on the torch forums and are inexpensive for what they are, which is an Eneloop re-wrap. Also, black Eneloop bad, white Eneloop good. I spent good money on 8 black Eneloop years ago and they constantly failed on me when needed or refused to take any charge. This seems to be the trend with the black ones.

I would never, ever, buy batteries from Amazon.

Finicky BLF members discuss LADDA here:

 
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Why not out of interest? I must have 50 of their AA NiMh & they have been just as good as eneloops
TBH, more so the 3.7v Li-ion varieties that are the kind of batteries that cause fires and explosions. Amazon sell cheap rubbish, and fake re-wraps. I’d buy a pack of basics 1.5v AA disposables but not NiMh as the battery is more expensive because it has expensive ingredients, thus cheap ones are likely to be lower quality. It’s unlikely they will survive as many cycles, most of them only hold about 50% of their stated capacity after a few charge/discharge cycles. My personal experience of Eneloops isn’t something I’d measure any other battery against, the black ones failed one by one. Plus, they’re overpriced.

Also, there are vast discussions on batteries on BudgetLightForum, and people aren’t snobs about much other than LED tints but really are picky when it comes to running the torches. They measure capacities and even have charge/discharge chargers to give a battery 50-100 full cycles in a week. Then they make graphs etc It’s pretty tedious but proves the point, and Amazon is a dirty word when it comes to batteries.
 

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