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Nino Film Blog | March 19, 2024

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Canon T2i / 550D battery showdown – original vs. fake – UPDATED: battery grip

Canon T2i / 550D battery showdown – original vs. fake – UPDATED: battery grip

Like certainly many of you Canon T2i / 550D owners I’ve been asking myself if I should invest in further original batteries for my new camera. As I’ve preached before, it is essential to have enough batteries on shoots. Nothing is more cumbersome than waiting for a battery to finally charge up. In fact, nothing is less acceptable than this. I had to do so when I was early-testing the T2i / 550D when I was out shooting “FEBRUARY”, because Canon only supplied me with one battery. I took an almost two-hour break at the Golden Arches while the charger was secretly plugged into one of their sockets … and seriously, there is no reason why anyone would ever spend that much time there!

T2i battery comparison

I decided to give the cloned batteries from China a shot. They are much cheaper then the original Canon ones and have been popping up in online shops like Amazon and eBay for the past weeks (they were unavailable in the beginning).

Some days ago, a package with three of the clone batteries arrived. The batteries themselves don’t show their capacity – usually a bad sign. The original Canon battery has 1120mAh and costs more than three times as much as the clones. (Since then, both the original and the clones became much cheaper – at least here in Europe.)

I tested the batteries in a simple way: I charged them up fully, both the Canon original and one of the clones. I then set went into the camera menu and switched the auto shutdown function off. On default, I think this is set to 1 minute, which is very annoying. (I usually have it set to 4 or 8 minutes.)

Switching off "Auto power off"

The camera was in movie mode all the time, but not recording (technically, only LiveView was on). I had my great new Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 lens on it, which offers no IS (this is important to mention here because IS uses up a LOT of battery power). I had it just pointing at an object with mediocre contrast, and the brightness of the LCD was up two notches from the standard configuration.

Before telling you the results, I’m gonna spoil this a bit right now: You almost get what you pay for with batteries.

But let’s start with the stuff I discovered when testing the original Canon battery, the LP-E8:
Despite the fact that I switched the auto shutdown function of the camera off, it did switch itself off after about 35 minutes. I switched it on again and the same happened after another 35 minutes.
After 75 minutes total running time, I suddenly got the overheating icon on the display, so I switched it off and let it rest for a few minutes. Then it was fine for another 12 minutes, and then it happened again. I decided to let it rest for more than just a few minutes and switched it back on after about 10-15 minutes. It then went on to run for another 60 minutes, but this time without overheating interruptions. In all, I got an impressive 147 minutes out of only one battery charge with the original LP-E8 battery that came with the camera.

Original battery:

So on to one of the clones:

This story is much shorter. The camera overheated after 41 minutes and then it only ran for another 8 minutes. That is a total running time of only 49 minutes, compared to the 147 minutes of the original battery. You get three times more power for around three times the price.

Nevertheless, I still prefer to have the three clones over only one original battery in many situations. Why, you might ask?

Simple: While I shoot with one of the batteries, I can charge another one. So I never run out of batteries, in theory at least. Furthermore, I won’t have to charge them as often as I have to charge a single one with a much higher capacity, simply because I have more of them and I can change. This might extend their lifespan a bit (I had that experience with batteries of other camcorders – you tend to use the original battery more because it lasts longer, but that’s also why it loses its capacity much faster.)

But anyway – there might be a third solution. As I said, the clone batteries I tested were no-name batteries and they have no sign of their capacity written on them.
Nevertheless, I discovered other third party batteries that claim to have 1.500mAh (vs. the original battery’s 1120mAh). I haven’t tested them (unfortunately, I got the other ones), but this sure sounds great. Even if they offer ‘only’ what the original battery has to offer, this would be great. For only $20 $10!

High-capacity clone?

Markus Haken from Germany tested a very similar battery and got GREAT results, practically same performance as the original. So this high-capacity clone is the one to get!

ADDED April 10, 2010: BATTERY GRIPS

Another way to extend the battery life are battery grips. I loved them with my old DSLRs, because this enabled my to hold the camera in a proper way. They hold two of the LP-E8 batteries (or clones) and therefore offer you twice the capacity.

But extending the battery life is to me in fact less important than to be able to hold this camera properly. The T2i/550D sure offers a lot of bang for the buck, but built-wise it can’t be compared to the quality and rigidity of a 7D or 5Dmk2. The camera is extremely light and often even too light compared to the lenses you are using it with (e.g. my 24-70mm 2.8 weighs twice as much). The battery grip adds some important weight to the package and just quite simply allows you to hold it in a much steadier way.

This hands-on video with the battery grip was created by cheesycam.com:

Thanks to the comment from Robman below I now also know that you can even insert standard AA batteries INSTEAD of the standard (or knock-off) batteries inside this grip. This is a great option: you can buy high-capacity rechargeable AA batteries and just stick with those if you prefer. These are of course also very cheap as they are a global standard and used in small devices everywhere!

So a battery grip is the greatest idea to extend the battery life of your Rebel T2i / 550D and especially necessary to be able to hold it properly – and by doing that, being able to shoot more stable footage in the end!

Comments

  1. Will watch this one carefully – just bought three clones! Anyone found a 550D Mains adapter yet? That sounds like the best idea, used to have one for the 5D.

    cheers

    • Thanks for mentioning the AC adapter, Elliot. Yes, there is one available – but I just checked, it’s sold out everywhere, just like many other accessories to the T2i. I think Canon didn’t anticipate how popular this camera would become. I’ll update the post once I find a dealer that has the AC adapter still in stock.

      • My advise – don’t buy cheap staff for your camera. You spend a lot of money for great equipment and thinking to spend 20-30 bucks less for batteries that can damaged your expensive camera.
        Think about it.

  2. That makes interesting reading, and I love the fact that you’ve looked at both sides of the argument. Thanks for the test.

  3. Tony F

    You should consider testing the batteries by how many shots you get out of them as well. Just leaving the camera on, idling, doesn’t give a great indication of how the battery really performs. When idling like that, they don’t pull that much current.

    Where I suspect you might see another difference between the OEM battery and the knock offs is in their ability to sustain power delivery for longer. You might get 10x as many burst shots out of one than the other, for example.

    My biggest beef with knock off china batteries is that they almost always leak and/or warp on me. After about 6 months of use they overheat so much that the plastic starts to warp making it hard to get in and out (as well as being unsafe at that point). I’ve actually had one leak inside my Nikon.

    • Tony,

      Thanks for the information. I know that while in idle mode, I won’t get a accurate indication of real-life battery performance. However, it shows me the difference between the original and the knock-off batteries percentage-wise – and that most certainly won’t change when using them in real-life situations. It is very hard to compare real-life situations as you certainly know, simply because they are different all the time. In a real-life situation I would switch the camera on and off frequently, I might use lenses that have IS and others that don’t, etc. But I will try to do such a test on an upcoming project anyway.

      Also thanks for mentioning the dangers that some of these batteries pose. I didn’t make that experience with my other cloned batteries (mainly for camcorders, not DSLRs), but the danger is real. However, I wouldn’t suggest leaving a battery inside a camera for an extended period of time when you’re not using it in any case. This is also true for the original batteries.

  4. Thanks for doing this because need more batteries for my T2i.

  5. Thanks for testing, Nino. I just ordered a battery off ebay which claims to have 1400mAh. I’ll keep you posted on how it works.

  6. robman

    if the original battery has 1120 mAh what about using the optional camera grip and stuff it with 6 conventional +2000mAh AA batteries? Since the internal battery has to be removed to mount the grip, the cam shouldn’t overheat as fast.

    Nice site by the way…

    • Thanks Robman, completely forgot those battery grips are also good for AA batteries. Updated the post with info on the battery grip.

      • now all we’ll have to do is wait for a replica of the new battery grip for the 550D so we won’t have to pay one-third of the body’s price for the bg 😉

      • Yeah … it’s not cheap. But I think I’ll bite the bullet, because yesterday I realized I can’t really shoot for extended periods without holding this camera properly. Somehow my hands are to large for this thing …
        I also have to say that I once had a very bad experience with a knock-off Nikon battery grip. The quality was aweful and that thing cracked open when I put the camera on a table. I think contrary to the batteries, I’ll stick with the original here.

      • Yeah, quality is always a problem there.
        There is a really nice BG clone for the 450D/500D, it’s something like 60 bucks and the quality is great (if not 99% equal to the original). We’ll see what the future holds, I’ve waited a few months for cloned batteries, now I’ll wait a few more for a cloned BG 😉

        I’ll just stick to tripod shooting for the time being.

      • robman

        Bought the cheapest original BG-E8 I found for 149 € + free shipping on eBay germany.

  7. Hi Nino,

    Great site!
    Do you know how long less the batteries last in actual recording state, not only live viewing?

    Just got my t2i.

    Thanks in advance! 🙂

    • I can’t tell you in detail because I use the camera on and off all the time on a shoot – but I estimate the recording time will give you 20-30% less battery life. Most power is needed by the LCD screen.

  8. Connor

    Hey, you mentioned in one of your videos that you used 3rd party battery grips on your 7d and 5d, and i was considering getting one for the t2i because they are almost a third of the price. I’ve been looking at the ones from phottix which may or may not be the same as yours however, i was wondering if you could tell me a little more about the “fake” grips. Do they monitor battery life and everything? how is the build quality? would you recommend one?

    • Honestly, I have no idea! I don’t have a 7D or 5D, I’ve just frequently worked with them. I have other – older – DSLR cameras with battery grips though, and the knock-off grips were fine so far. Can’t say anything about the T2i-knock-offs so far as I haven’t ordered mine yet.

  9. I used clone battery for several Canon DSLRs starting from 350D, then 40D and now with 5DMkII. Never had any problems.

    Always purchased batteries with declared capacity and my impressions are positive.

    The only disadvantage is that I can’t see the remaining power on 5DMkII because original Canon batter comes with chip that clones miss…

  10. Hi and thank you for such good info. Usually I don’t need more than 1 battery or memory disk.. but yesterday I ran out of battery. That won’t happen often but planning for more extended shoots( I was at a concert) your information helped a lot. At the moment I have to plan for external backup for my computer so I don’t lose my images from my computer.. any suggestions? Thanks so much… Sharon aka “Photography by Sharlee” and on FB

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