Reviving A Dead AA/AAA Battery Using A Metal BBQ Clamp

Today we are doing a quick break from our normal review routine with and a simple tip about how to revive a dead rechargeable battery which is something that happens more often than you might think and can save you money before you go out and buy new batteries.

A disclaimer – we didn’t invent anything shown in this video. You can find plenty of videos and articles online showing how to use metal wires, clamps and other metallic aids to revive batteriesץ It is just a useful tip that we feel as many people as possible need to know about – especially photographers who tend to use lots of batteries for their gear.

As simple as it can be

So you have a rechargeable battery that seems like it’s dead and won’t recharge. Before you throw it away for recycling, try the following: Take any old full metal BBQ clamp (if you don’t have one this inexpensive one should work) that you have, clean it up and dry it and get a fully a charged battery of the same type (this should work for most batteries – we just happen to have an AA GP battery which seems dead that we want to magically revive).

Now comes the fun part. Put the negative (flat) part of the two batteries so that they will touch and hold them between the clamps making sure there is good contact on all sides.

Hold it this way for 30 seconds (no need for more time). Now give the dead battery a try and recharge it – vualá, we just saved this battery and we can now charge it again and use it and you can do this process every time the battery seems to die.

We can’t promise that this will work every time or on every battery (although so far we have yet to come across a battery where this failed on us) and we can also give no guarantees as to how many times this will work for a specific battery nor that it will be able to give the battery the same charging power that it had when it was new – but from our experience, it does seem to work more or less like normal – Enjoy and don’t forget to asked your friends to help us share this tip around – they will thank you for it.

As we have mentioned in the video we typically use either (we love all of these and they are super reliable):

White Eneloop batteries (AA/AAA)
Black Eneloop Pro batteries (AA)
La Crosse Technology BC-700 Battery Charger (the one we use in the video)

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Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.