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Viltrox FZ100 battery!

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silentstorm

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This looks like a winner to me! High capacity and type-c direct charging! WOW!!





900bc8edd1d843b9aebb27335352ad51.jpg





Can be charged from power bank or phone charger directly!
Can be charged from power bank or phone charger directly!





Look at the price...
Look at the price...



Just divide the RMB by 7 to get the equivalent of USD, less than $20.

From customers reviews, it's very good, even operating at -30c temps, no nagging message of 3rd party battery.

I'm so getting this to try. HAHAHAHAHA
 
Why don't Sony engineers have an idea as simple as integrating an usb-port into the battery? Rendering millions of chargers trash. The astronomic margins they earn from their overpriced OEM batteries - the ink cartridge equivalent in the camera industry - might have equipped them with the money to hire one or two engineers with a brain?
 
DirkPeh said:
Why don't Sony engineers have an idea as simple as integrating an usb-port into the battery? Rendering millions of chargers trash. The astronomic margins they earn from their overpriced OEM batteries - the ink cartridge equivalent in the camera industry - might have equipped them with the money to hire one or two engineers with a brain?
Click to expand...


Using USB directly to charge a battery, this method or technology has been around for many years already. I bought a number of them before COVID, see attached pic. Even the cable supplied has 2 heads for faster efficient charging of 2 batteries in one go. HAHAHAHA





Old USB micro B port though, from before COVID times.
Old USB micro B port though, from before COVID times.



The newer ones use new type-c ports. I was wondering who and when will camera batteries of varies brands take foot. And here it is Viltrox!!! HAHAHAHA
 
Popcorn at the ready…
 
There are a bunch of these available already, several on Amazon. They may all be the same battery just with different labels/brands. They have slightly less capacity than the original due to using smaller cells to make room for the USB charging circuitry. Be warned - people get quite nasty in threads on this forum talking about 3rd party batteries. You will need to make your own choices about safety and damage risk.
 
Batteries have a limited volume for any particular form factor. The volume can be used for the actual cells to increase capacity or it can be used for usb connectors and charging circuitry... But you have to trade one for the other.

That battery with a built in charging usb port is a really cool concept and I might purchase one (hopefully people will post reviews!). But it won't have an equivalent capacity to a battery that is all cell, no charger.

I would expect this battery to be better for older cameras like my A7RIV that probably won't receive future firmware updates with new battery blocking code.

When Sony adds a USB port to their batteries it will be to update the firmware on the batteries to make them compatible with newer camera models.
 
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silentstorm said:
This looks like a winner to me! High capacity and type-c direct charging! WOW!!

Just divide the RMB by 7 to get the equivalent of USD, less than $20.

From customers reviews, it's very good, even operating at -30c temps, no nagging message of 3rd party battery.

I'm so getting this to try. HAHAHAHAHA
Click to expand...
There is almost always some limitation when it comes to these 3rd party batteries, I just don't buy them anymore, because the aggravation isn't worth it.



OR

Just use the 3rd party batteries only so you don't have the original life span to compare it to...

Either way, let us know how you like them when you get them.
 
DirkPeh said:
Why don't Sony engineers have an idea as simple as integrating an usb-port into the battery? Rendering millions of chargers trash. The astronomic margins they earn from their overpriced OEM batteries - the ink cartridge equivalent in the camera industry - might have equipped them with the money to hire one or two engineers with a brain?
Click to expand...
I seriously doubt that analogy fits or that Sony is raking in that relative amount of profits on batteries, and building a charger into each and every battery is in fact more wasteful and costs some capacity (there's no magic cells or chemistry which 3rd parties have access to that an OEM doesn't)... So perhaps they thought of it, and thought better.

This isn't a new concept tho, Viltrox and others have been making those batteries with built in ports for quite a while.
 
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I dunno if they've repackaged them or something but Viltrox has been making batteries one these for a few years, I bought a Viltrox lighting LCD panel in 2021 that came with a similar battery (wasn't white). Works fine, kinda convenient but it's not gonna have the same capacity as the originals...

3rd party USB chargers for batteries are also pretty darn common, tho fast ones are rarer, I don't imagine cramming all the circuitry into a battery shell will make it much faster... Does it have any input specs for the USB-C port?
 
jhunna said:
There is almost always some limitation when it comes to these 3rd party batteries, I just don't buy them anymore, because the aggravation isn't worth it.

OR

Just use the 3rd party batteries only so you don't have the original life span to compare it to...

Either way, let us know how you like them when you get them.
Click to expand...
I've used 3rd party batteries since the A7r days (FW50), and didn't encounter any problems.

Why did I choose to use 3rd party all these years? For both the 7r and the 7r.3, the original battery that came with the camera didn't last for more than 18mths, and I'm not a heavy user. Charge the battery maybe 20 times in a year, then the charging only stuck at 2 bars, and soon after, lost lots of capacity. Charger is the original one that came with the camera, not 3rd party, still using it today. Lithium batteries usually have about 500 - 800 charging cycles, but the Sony batteries, FW50 & FZ100, didn't last more than 80 cycles strangely.

From my experience, why pay more for poor quality originals? Choosing 3rd party batteries makes a lot of sense for my usage.
 
I hope they do it - FZ100s were amazing with the A7-III and its 2Mp EVF, weak IBIS, old pre-RTT AF system and processor but when they`re running 60Mp / 50Mp Stacked / Global shutter sensors, hyper-IBIS, 9Mp EVFs , high power processors, massive shot buffers writing to fast cards, Ai AF processors and cams capable of silly video times , they`re starting to look like the FW50 did in the A7R Mk1 - they`re not the energizer bunny they used to be ..

Of course , knocking the EVF down to 5,6Mp and / or not chimping your shots in glorious 9Mp Megavision will help make them last longer as will not seeing how fast you can fill up two massive CFE-A cards with an A9-III at the local footy match but that`s boring - LOL

 
Adam-T said:
I hope they do it - FZ100s were amazing with the A7-III and its 2Mp EVF, weak IBIS, old pre-RTT AF system and processor but when they`re running 60Mp / 50Mp Stacked / Global shutter sensors, hyper-IBIS, 9Mp EVFs , high power processors, massive shot buffers writing to fast cards, Ai AF processors and cams capable of silly video times , they`re starting to look like the FW50 did in the A7R Mk1 - they`re not the energizer bunny they used to be ..

Of course , knocking the EVF down to 5,6Mp and / or not chimping your shots in glorious 9Mp Megavision will help make them last longer as will not seeing how fast you can fill up two massive CFE-A cards with an A9-III at the local footy match but that`s boring - LOL
Adam-T said:
--
Click to expand...
** Please ignore the Typos, I'm the world's worst Typist **
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that out of all those things, the higher res display is by far the largest contributor, and everything else is probably a distant second although I don't know enough about their new processors to say for sure... I don't think things are quite as bad as during the gen 1-2 days tho, Sony bodies still seem to have better battery life than everyone else's (on par at worst).
 
Impulses said:
enough about their new processors to say for sure... I don't think things are quite as bad as during the gen 1-2 days tho, Sony bodies still seem to have better battery life than everyone else's (on par at worst).
Click to expand...
Gen 1 isn`t too bad, the A7 cruises along quite happily on FW50s as does the A6300 but the IBIs in the A7R2 really kills them
 
DirkPeh said:
Why don't Sony engineers have an idea as simple as integrating an usb-port into the battery? Rendering millions of chargers trash. The astronomic margins they earn from their overpriced OEM batteries - the ink cartridge equivalent in the camera industry - might have equipped them with the money to hire one or two engineers with a brain?
Click to expand...
Actually it's probably more wasteful to put the charging circuitry into each battery, and it reduces the battery capacity, as you're replacing some of the space for batteries with the socket and charging port.

Is it more convenient? Definitely. Is it better? Not sure...

What would be better is to have standardised Li-ion batteries, so everything uses the same batteries and chargers. Design the latching and charge points the same and you could charge a number of different sized batteries with the same charger - which you could make USB-C if you wish.

It's clear that Sony view batteries as a revenue stream though, otherwise they wouldn't put so much effort into making third party batteries incompatible/nag with each firmware upgrade. Personally I would argue this is anti-competitive behaviour.
 
abe4652 said:
The question is how can someone have built in sophisticated circuitry into a small battery to prevent overchargting?
Click to expand...
It is done in millions of phones every day....
 
jhunna said:
abe4652 said:
The question is how can someone have built in sophisticated circuitry into a small battery to prevent overchargting?
Click to expand...
It is done in millions of phones every day....
Click to expand...
They tend to be larger than a camera battery and have larger capacity batteries too...
 
jhunna said:
abe4652 said:
The question is how can someone have built in sophisticated circuitry into a small battery to prevent overchargting?
Click to expand...
It is done in millions of phones every day....
Click to expand...
Batteries in cell phones are just the cell - the BMS is on the phone's daughter or motherboard.

I'm tempted to pick one up and open it to see how they managed it - I really hope it's not just independently charging the cells without balancing.....
 
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