Recently I purchased an HP Photosmart 635 to give to my parents as a gift. I was extremely disappointed to discover that the batteries lasted about 20 minutes! These were the really good Duracell batteries that came with the camera. I put a brand new set of Panasonic Alkaline batteries in the camera and got similar life time. A little surfing on the web showed me that I was not alone. Many people experience this problem! Do a Google search on HP Photosmart 635 battery problem and see what comes up. It seems this camera sucks down batteries really fast. but Why???
Comment: "This camera does a lot for what u have paid. I bought this camera a couple of weeks back and there were some problems with self timer 2 shots. Later I found that those problems are related to the battery and not to the software. Yes. It eats up battery very fast, which you cannot afford. I have 4 NiMH rechargeable batteries with me and I can take only around 40 pictures (half of them with LCD off). Buy this camera if you are planned to use with AC adapter. Otherwise step away from this product."
Experiment Setup:
Using my handheld multimeter, I inserted the meter in series with the
batteries on both cameras. The multimeter was set on the 10Amp range.
| Test Condition | Olympus D-460 | HP Photosmart 635 |
| Camera powered off. | 0.00013 Amps | 0.00019 |
| Camera on, display off |
0.25 Amps initially 0.01 Amps after about 5 seconds |
0.5 to 0.67 Amps Maintained this current for the entire 2 minutes I conducted the test! |
| Camera on, Display On. |
0.69 A | 0.80 Amps |
October 2004 Update:
HP was nice enough to help me work this problem out. I call
to tech support got a new camera quickly sent out to me. When the new camera
arrived, I quickly discovered that the current draw was the same as my
camera! Ok so I finally thought, "Maybe HP published the power specs in the
manual!"
Here is what I found:
Conclusion:
Leaving the camera powered on causes a current draw equivalent to what the Olympus D-460 draws with it's display on. Although the camera seems to auto-power off after about 6 minutes, the batteries just can't be expected to last long while supplying over a half Amp of current. Turning on the display does increase the current but is not the cause of the batteries dying quickly.
HP clearly specified the current in the manual, I just did not dig far enough to see it. Regular Alkaline batteries are NOT recommended for this camera.
Feel free to email me with questions.
Mark