BLM 1

From MyOlympus

BLM-1 battery and cheaper 3rd party alternatives

• Nov 11, 04: Test added which shows which capacity the original Olympus BLM-1 battery and cheap 3rd party alternatives have. With the batteries I had (one original and two 3rd party ones) I measured the following:
  • Original Olympus battery: 1299 mAh
  • 3rd party battery 1: 1077 mAh
  • 3rd party battery 2: 744 mAh
    • This is OK, since the Olympus original BLM-1 battery costs 17 times more than the 3rd party alternatives I bought.
    • The complete test results are available here.
• The original BLM-1 battery from Olympus is very expensive, selling at prices of 70 Euro upwards (a Dutch user even reported that the BLM-1 costs 119 Euro in the Netherlands) - a multiple of what a NiMH battery set costs. Since February 2004 cheap 3rd party alternatives to the BLM-1 battery are available from a number of sources (mainly sellers on ebay - do a search for "BLM-1" on ebay).
• The questions then are
  • how good these cheaper alternatives are and
  • whether they can they be used without problems in the Olympus 5060.
• The original BLM-1 battery from Olympus is rated at 7.2 Volt and 1500 mAh. The alternatives have voltages of 7.2 or 7.4 Volt and capacities of 1300 or 1500 mAh.
• The voltage difference is no problem:
  • The 7.2 Volt which Olympus officially quotes varies in reality between 6.7 Volt (discharged battery) and 7.7 Volt (fully charged battery). These are voltages measured under a pretty heavy load of over 1 Ampere (battery loaded with a 6.8 Ohm resistor).
  • With no load the measured voltages become 7.37 Volt in a discharged state (emtpy battery screen showing) and 8.2 Volt (battery fully charged).

=> In other words, it's highly irrelevant if the battery is rated at 7.2 or 7.4 Volt - the camera can withstand 7.7 Volts without problems.

• The capacity difference is also something not to worry about. There is no big difference between 1500 and 1300 mAh (we are talking of a 10% difference), but the 3rd party battery costs a fraction of the original one.
• Personally I bought two 3rd party BLM-1 batteries in August 2004 from a Hong Kong eBay seller.
  • Price per battery was US $ 5.49 and the total cost including shipping was US $17.
  • The batteries arrived in 10 days to my home in Germany.
  • I tested one of these cheap "counterfeit" batteries. It lasted for over 600 shots (SHQ, all with the LCD on, about 10% with flash) and still had juice left when I got tired and interrupted the test. It just wouldn't die.

• Vidpro fast battery charger (this has been reported by Rod in the Olympus 5060 users group):
  • My results are the Oly charger took around 5 hours to get to a full charge and the Vidpro about half that (which is what they advertise). BUT, it could be the second battery I charged on the Vidpro didn't need that much charging - what I did wasn't under very controlled conditions re residual charge before recharging.
  • The Vidpro (US $30) charger base is a little larger than the Oly, and also has an AC to DC module (a little smaller than the Oly unit itself) that plugs into the AC wall socket whereas the Oly unit accepts AC directly with the supplied AC cord. Both the Oly & Vidpro accept 100v-240v, but the big difference I like is that the Vidpro has a 12v DC (vehicle, etc.) adapter allowing the batteries to be charged in the field.