Sony HDR-AS30V: More Wasabi NP-BX1 Batteries

The Sony HDR-AS30V helmet camera can record about 5.5 h of 1920×1080 60 fps video on a 64 GB Micro-SD card, but a single NP-BX1 battery provides a 1.5 h run time, tops. Having had a good experience with the previous Wasabi batteries, I picked up three more and ran all six through the battery tester:

The red curve is the Sony OEM battery, the two lower curves are the Wasabi batteries from January, and the upper three come from the new Wasabi batteries. All in all, they look good to me.

These curves aren’t directly comparable to the older ones, as I’ve bumped the discharge to 500 mA to better match the actual camera load. These worked out to about two hours apiece, so the camera must draw around 600 or 700 mA.

The Wasabi batteries deliver a higher voltage than the Sony OEM battery over nearly all of the discharge curve. The older ones delivered almost exactly the same run time, which leads me to believe the camera cuts off at 2.8 V, too, with a boost power supply extracting all the energy under the curve.

I suppose a 1.5 h run time makes sense for downhill skiiing, but it’s painfully short for bike trips.