The battery in two Aimpoint H-1’s Died after two weeks.
I took a carbine class on the 12th and 13th of April. I put my Department issued AR and personally owned AR away after the class. I left the H-1 powered on both rifles, just like always. I noticed the battery was dead on my issued rifle last week. I checked my personal rifle today and the battery was also dead.
I’ve only owned the sights for 6 weeks max. Aimpoint states a 50,000 battery life at setting 8. I had mine set higher but even at 12 I would think I’d get a year out of the battery.
Anyone have an idea what’s going on here? I’ve emailed Aimpoint but thought I’d get a quicker response her. Each sight had the origional Duracell DL2032 battery in the sight, I replaced them with energizer 2032’s today.
Two is one and one is none. Can you say BUIS!
The search function is not working for me today; it boots me out saying page not found.
I leave mine on while on setting 8 when not actually in use. If I’m shooting it I adjust it up or down depending how I need it. After done shooting I adjust it back to 8 and toss it in my rifle case.
I’ve owned about 9 Aimpoint Micros thus far and have not had a single battery die on me. I replace them all annually on or about the Jan 1st of every year. Be sure to tighten the battery cap as tight as you can, I’ve seen a few people with weird problems who had power issues that tightening the cap fixed.
I’m not sure there was no power at all when I came back from a week of vacation. I left one at work the other was in the safe at home. They worked great the week of April 12th. I used on and a friend used the other during two days of training. I know mine was cranked right up to ten or twelve his probably was too. I pulled it out of the case to mount a magnifier and noticed the red dot was out. I went to turn it on but it was on. I removed the battery and reinstalled it with no luck. It fired right up with a new battery. Same deal with my personal gun but it took me a week longer to check that one. I bought both H-1’s from a local gun shop for $409 each. They were just not selling for him. One had been out of the box on display; the second never had the battery installed. I hope it was just a few bad batteries but Duracell makes good stuff too.
GotM4,
Thanks for the tip I will make sure the caps are nice and tight, I used a quarter to tighten them up but I will double check. Having one crap out on me was no big deal; I assumed it was the demo unit and a battery issue. Having two go down was kind of strange. I used an M3 for about six months that I bought used here on the EE and prior to coming across these H-1’s.
Definitely keep us posted as to what Aimpoint says. The H-1 from my AK which I mounted almost 2 years ago has never been turned off for more than a minute or two (for some reason people always want to shut it off after looking at the gun).
I never use the batteries that come packaged w/optics, there’s no telling their age or storage conditions. My guess is that you started w/poor batteries and w/the new batteries you just installed you should get the insane Aimpoint battery life we’ve come to expect.
Tomac
Highly doubt there’s anything wrong with your optic.
While on setting 8 or lower you will get excellent battery life, setting 10 will give you 9-10 months as stated by Aimpoint. Setting 12 will likely give you drastically less.
Change the battery, and when not in use return it to setting 8. I bet your battery life will be much longer this time.
Yeah it’s an old thought, but leaving electronic devices off, and stationary will kill batteries quicker. It has something to do with circuitry, and the cells in the battery. I have seen it with things like flashlights. I pulled out my old BOB from the truck of my car that had been there for about a 1.5 years, and found my AA maglite had gone dead. Lights running CR123 batts have a much longer storage life. Strange things happen sometimes…
You seem to be talking about a couple different issues here.
I am assuming that your AA maglite was loaded with “standard” alkaline AA cells? If so, this is not surprising behavior. Alkaline cells have awful shelf life, an issue that is greatly exacerbated when they are exposed to the temperature extremes found in the trunk of a vehicle.
“Standard” CR123 cells are lithium primaries, hence their massive shelf life and tolerance of extreme temperatures. You can get AA cells in lithium, however, and any BOB lights are definitely better centered around this battery chemistry (whether AA or CR123).
The Aimpoint H-1/T-1 uses a lithium cell, so it should enjoy an extremely long shelf life even when turned off.
This is the sentence I find particularly confusing:
leaving electronic devices off, and stationary will kill batteries quicker.
Quicker than what? Quicker than if the device is turned on or quicker than if the cells are stored outside of the device?
I don’t get where you’re going with that. All cells have a self-discharge rate. Some devices draw a light current off of cells even when they are off, but this is not universal amongst all battery-fed devices.
So in some cases, batteries will last longer if they are stored outside of a device.
But I can’t think of any situations in which batteries would last longer while a device is on than they would if the device was turned off.
Nothing yet, I feel pretty comfortable now that I just had the setting too high. It surprised me but after reading the manual it makes sense. Page three of the manual states “Over 5 years of continuous (day and night) use at pos 8 of 12 and over 10 months at pos 10 of 12 (average values for all models). Typically 500,000 hours at NVD settings. Storage battery 10 years.”
Let me clarify that math has never been my strong point. One of your guys could probably set up an equation for us to give an accurate estimate!
Setting 8 gets me 60 months and increasing it by two settings to 10 cuts lowers the battery life to 10 months can see that setting 12 would smoke the battery pretty quickly. Okay anyone else out there with an H1 or T1 interested in running and experiment with me? I’m willing to sacrifice a fresh battery. I could take the unit off my personal gun, put in a fresh battery and crank her up to 12. I could check it 3 times a day to get a pretty accurate result. If there is a math Whiz out there you could save me a lot of time and run a formula for me :D!
Or I could just call Aimpoint in the morning! I will do that and get back to you guys. I’m going to guess the battery life at 12 would only be a few months at best.