Quote:
This is not a design flaw. At a current draw of 0.02 mA, the Steripen will take about 8.5 years to exhaust a pair of series-wired 1500 mA/h capacity CR123 cells.

1500 mA*h / .02 mA = 75000 hours or 8.56 years.

What brand of batteries are you using in the Steripen? I read a discussion about the variance in inexpensive Chinese CR-123 cells that were brand new. Using a lithium battery charge meter the author determined that in a batch of 64 cells, 1 out of 6 measured less than 20% of capacity. Maybe you got a lemon.


That sounds nice on paper, but it takes no more than 48 hours to completely drain a set of batteries in practice. I've experienced this with both CR123 variants, the Adventurer and the Journey. My wife even called Steripen and asked about it. They recommended removing the batteries after every usage to prevent this.

The original Steripen, using AA's, does not have this problem, but it does completely shut down if you get water into the sensors (by storing it wand up).
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