When purchasing a new doppler, there are several choices to be made, some that are preferences and others that are more technical. One of these choices is the battery power. Which is the better option for you? Having sold and serviced dopplers for over 25 years, I have seen the benefit of both options. Still, I would recommend the Alkaline battery option over the rechargeable version for the following reasons:
- The typical doppler will get approximately 500 assessments from a new set of alkalines. This translates to 6 months to a year for the routine doppler use and is a simple change of standard alkaline. Why would you want to have to remember to plug it in to charge it every night?
- Some people will purchase the rechargeable doppler as the greener option, but the alkaline batteries consumed through its life are offset by the electricity consumed to recharge the batteries constantly.
- It is common to see a repair due to the doppler getting charged with either the wrong AC adaptor or charging the doppler with Alkalines in it, resulting in the batteries leaking. These repairs often turn into replacing the whole doppler.
- Have you ever picked up a doppler that had completely deleted batteries? With Alkaline, you simply replace them, but you will have to wait for it to have enough charge to function with rechargeable.
There are times when rechargeable can be a good choice. This is especially true when the doppler is fixed to a wall or will remain in one place. These dopplers would usually have a higher quality battery that is less susceptible to capacity memory and a longer run time.