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I think amp-hours are confusing and I wish they just gave us battery life figures in joules
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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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Yes but a fully charged battery will also have a voltage higher than its nominal voltage which mitigates that quite a bit. Also as I said in my origional comment, the rated capacity is only ever a rough measurement anyways so while volts×amphours=watthours isn't perfect, it's close enough.
I guess the part I'm missing is, when are you ever really comparing across voltage. Generally when you're shopping for batteries it's for a specific application and that application will have a specific voltage requirement. So you're only ever really going to be comparing batteries of the same voltage anyways. It isn't like you can just toss a 48V battery in something that requires a 6V battery.
Although I do agree that a voltage agnostic capacity measurement would be nice. My personal preference would be watt hours.
Battery banks are the biggest offenders to me. Like this, not only am I mad that 20 thousand mah is just 20 Ah and you gotta reduce them fractions, but it doesn't mention the battery voltage, nor do we care. Usb c outputs 5,9,12 or 18 volts but none of those are the nominal battery voltage that we would want to calculate the Wh. But since the internal voltage or chemistry is never mentioned anywhere, you can't even compare 2 different battery banks that both say 20000mAh.
It's basically just become a "bigger number better" marketing number now, and half of them are making shit up.