Just wanted to provide some feedback.
I picked up a set of 819 Wasabi batteries for the XA10. Two batteries a charger and a 12v charger plug, $39.99, Amazon. I went with that size battery because I didn't care for how far the 827 batteries stuck out the back. These stick out about 3/8", which is about right. I especially like the very slick compact charger. I've had good luck with Wasabi batteries in the past and my main goal was to not have to carry the charger and chord around Europe for a month, plus to have the ability to charge on 12v:
Amazon.com: Wasabi Power Battery and Charger Kit for Canon BP-819, VIXIA HF10, HF11, HF20, HF21, HF100, HF200, HF G10, HF M30, HF M31, HF M32, HF M40, HF M41, HF M300, HF M400, HF S10, HF S11, HF S20, HF S21, HF S30, HF S100, HF S200, HG20, HG21, HG3

Anyway just wanted to report that they work great. I was able to go usually a whole day of intermittent on/off shooting with one battery for most days (using the xlr mic). Some days it would run low but I had the ability to charge on 12v between locations/setup, etc. before they would go completely dead, so workflow was never interrupted. Of course, that's not a whole day of constant shooting. I suppose it would come out to 2-3 hours of actual recorded footage, but there is usually a lot of reviwing the shots, retakes (where the LCD might be open or closed, set-up, fussing with the menu, things like that. Then, sometimes I would use the viewfinder more than other times, so it's really hard to say. I never let the cam run to see how long a battery would last. At any rate, I actually never charged up the 2nd battery yet believe it or not. The few times I ran completely out was towards the end of day and then just used the little Canon battery as a back-up. The batteries report the available power accurately on the LCD. Like I say, I especially prefer the compact battery charger over the Canon power supply with electrical wires. It's very compact, adjusts for 120/220, has a fold-out plug ..perfect for on the go. It isn't a fast charger by any stretch. It takes several hours to re-charge a depleated battery. I made a habit of puttung the dead one on at night (all night), or left it in the car during off-shooting time (diner, etc). If I were doing a long wedding (which I don't do) or long interview event, then the standard power supply and cables make more sense. Bear in mind that, as I found out, you cannot transfer from the camera to a PC using the USB if you DON'T have the Canon power supply hooked to the camera. But you can xfer via the SD cards if your laptop has an SD slot, which most do these days.

I also want to put in a plug for Blue Nook who supplied the batteries. They were able to expedite shipping of my batteries next day on short notice and even called me to ensure they had all the correct information, then emailed me twice to let me know they were on their way. I don't work for them or anything, I was just pleasantly suprised how well they went out of their way to ship out the product. I would imagine the Canon batteries, although more expensive, would last longer, but these make a decent alternative. I have bought this same style charger (ebay) for a couple other cams I have in the past years ago and they've held up. Would be nice if Canon had a dual battery (or 4 battery) table-style charger with Charge status LCD like Sony has, but these little ones like in the Wasabi kit work great.

Glad you're happy with your purchase Mark.

A heads up: one user has reported otoday that he got only a two hour run time with one of these Wasabis. Very disappointing to hear this. I'm testing one today to see what happens. The Canons are usually good for around 4 hours, I think. They say if it's too good to be true, and all that, and I believe that.

When you post yor test results, plese give fulldetails, including the charger and methodology used, model and age of the battery,

Thanks for doing this.

I just got one for my PD170. The battery ran for about 600 minutes. The LCD was open for almost the entire time. BTW I had 200 minutes left on the charge when I shut down. For me, if it craps out after 1 season I don't care. For $40 you can't go wrong. So far I like it, One battery for the entire wedding. Of course I had 3 other batteries in reserve just in case but didn't need them.

Maybe Scott got a bad one. If mine are fine I'll let everyone know asap. I'm not going to bother to test them at this point, I'll use them and see what happens. I'm using the Canon cameras primarily for a wedding ceremony, so I'll definitely get through that far safely.

I'll have two XA10 running simultaneously, and so I can get a very good idea of how the batteries I've got compare to the Canon brand.

I just charge both overnight ... one shows 168 minutes and the other 172 min. Not really what I was hoping for.

Last night's clip was one hour and nineteen minutes. It was set on auto and wide. At the end of the first act of rehearsal ... it was blinking so I shut it down. I don't know if the footage is lost if the battery dies without being properly powered down.

Since it was un-manned there was no zooming to use up extra power.

Needless to say, I wouldn't purchase these again unless someone could explain how it was user error.

Scott

Just did a test with a Wasabi BP819 charged in the Wasabi charger. Almost exactly four hours with MXP recording on my HF-M40 with the LCD open and LCD brightness turned all the way down. The battery time indicator said 197 min I think when I first started the camera. If I remember correctly, I got over five hours last fall when I did this test with the LCD closed.

I started with about 300 mins indicated on my new Wasabi's, which was close to the Canons, it was actually a bit higher. My two batteries are fine, very happy.

A new, freshly charged, Wasabi BP827 gave me 5 hour 44 minutes 35 seconds of continuous recording.
This was to a SanDisk Ultra SDHC card in slot A.with the LCD screen open at SP quality.
The camera was left to record until it shut off buy itself (on low battery).

This rounds to 345 minutes. Funny, that matches the number on page 178 of the manual. But YMMV.

When first connected the viewfinder read 362 minutes of battery remaining (off by a trivial 5%).

Worth noting that battery mAh ratings are based on different criteria than typical camcorder low voltage cut-off.

A new, freshly charged, Wasabi BP827 gave me 5 hour 44 minutes 35 seconds of continuous recording.
This was to a SanDisk Ultra SDHC card in slot A.with the LCD screen open at SP quality.
The camera was left to record until it shut off buy itself (on low battery).

This rounds to 345 minutes. Funny, that matches the number on page 178 of the manual. But YMMV.

When first connected the viewfinder read 362 minutes of battery remaining (off by a trivial 5%).

Worth noting that battery mAh ratings are based on different criteria than typical camcorder low voltage cut-off.

Thanks Don. I'm going to try that same test here at home to see what it gives me. Perhaps it's a totally invalid time reading or maybe they need to be charged more than once.

Charging is subject to some variables.
The battery I used was charged using the Wasabi charger and spent perhaps 9 hours on float (green light) after the red light went out. Many chargers give the green (full) indication (arguably more like a shift from rapid to trickle/float charge) at something less than actual full charge. On some it is at around 80% to 90%, but I do not know the actual point with Wasabi. This time spent on "green" probably allowed the battery to get closer to 100% charge.

[The numbers in the following are approximate, but illustrate the problem.] I recall with the older NiCD technology used in Canon Hi8 camcorders (e.g., A1 Digital and L2) the battery was a nominal 6 volt cell, but more like 7.5 volts at full charge, and camcorder low-voltage cut off was at about 5.5 volts, However, NiCD battery mAh ratings were based on a 20 hour discharge rate to 5 volts. Camcorder usage was more like a 2 hour discharge rate resulting in operation along a different time-current-voltage curve.

The low cost of the Wasabi is perhaps in part due to more relaxed QC, so one can expect wider variations in performance of individual units.

At least with some laptop PCs, the battery time remaining indication needed to be re-baselined on ocasion. Frequent parital discharges would cause it to loose accuracy. Not sure if that applies to camcorder batteries, but it might.

Does anyone know if these wasabi batteries could be charged in a canon charger or better yet a Pearstone Duo charger?

I charge them in my Canon charger...so yes, they can .BTW, the batteries should get better after a few charge discharge sessions.

Now if I could only find Wasabi's for my AC130, I'd be happy.

I bought the Vivitar version of the BP-819 battery and fully charged it sayd 178 minutes in my Canon HF M301 so that is right in line with what your Wasabi says. My offbrand BP-829 in my XA10 shows a little more than 270 minutes I believe. I paid $9 for the Viv 819 and $23 for the other offbrand 829 so if they last one year or two I will be happy.

The low cost of the Wasabi is perhaps in part due to more relaxed QC, so one can expect wider variations in performance of individual units.


That's probably true of most 3rd party vendors. I got the 2 Wasabi batteries plus charger for both my Olympus Pen and Panasonic GH2.

One of the batteries for the Oly flat out died (as in no "resusitation") on the 4th charge cycle. The other one swelled up in the camera and had to be pried out with sharp pointed leather punch (took almost an hour to get it out of the camera). Needless to say both went to a recycling station, I didn't have the time to mess with returning to Blue Nook.

The pair of Wasibis for the GH2 didn't cause any real problems. They seemed to provide noticeably less "run time" than the Lumix battery and when they quit it was totally without any warning. They lack the chip to communicate with the GH2. So they went the way of the others, to the recycling station too.

Couldn't take a chance of "shutdown" without warning on a project. So I pay the price for the "real" thing, bite my lip and move on.

I have no experience with Wasabi but have used about a dozen generic batteries for my Sony V1U cameras, Manhatten LCD Monitor, and Z96 LED lights over the last three or four years. Out of that dozen I have only had two bad ones. Considering I paid $18-$22 for them vs. $150 for a Sony battery I just threw out the two that came bad and still came out far ahead. All of them had the info chip that meant the V1U's showed battery remaining in minutes, etc.

I just bought a Canon XA10 and bought a generic battery for it also. I picked one that had a lot of reviews and was higly rates. I have not really had a chance to see how well it works but it charged up just fine and shows the amount of minutes on it that I expected and was comparable to an official Canon battery.

I was very skeptical of the Wasabi's but mine work identically to the Canon's. I am very pleased with mine.

I've purchased 4 of the Wasabi BP827's and have had ZERO problems with them, under heavy use week after week in a professional environment. They last forever, they accurately communicate with the camera about remaining capacity, and are in every was as good as the OEM Canons in my opinion. In over a year of use I haven't had so much as a hiccup with the Wasabis.

Murphy's Law: Just as soon as I posted above about how great my experience with my four Wasabi BP-827 batteries has been, I had one partially malfunction on my this weekend! For some reason it no longer will communicate with the camera about how many minutes remain. It still holds a full charge and operates the camera perfectly otherwsie, but instead of saying "348 minutes" or whatever, it just shows a red battery icon with no estimate of capacity.

The good news is that Blue Nook's customer service was GREAT. Since the battery has a 3-year warranty and mine are all just over one year old, I called them today and within about 2 minutes they had a new one on the way without even requiring me to RMA the faulty battery to them. $6.50 for shipping, and that's it... Easy. =)

Overall, still a big fan of Wasabi batteries!

Someone please tell me, how long is required for a full charge for the 827's?

How long for a first charge? Also, how long for a full charge after running one down all the way?

I have back to back shoots this weekend and I want to plan things out.

I just ordered two more of these batteries, my first two operate exactly like the Canon. $44 for two plus a charger? No brainer.

So I was previously happy as a clam with my Wasabi batteries, given their affordable price. I have to say that now that I've had them for about 9 months, and probably shot about 45 hrs total using them, they don't hold their charge very well anymore at all. While I used to get about 200+ min on both of them, they now only charge to about 120-145 minutes. Also, I had one drop out on me totally when the on-screen gauge said it had 42 minutes of charge left. Thank goodness I had just started a new clip, so I only lost 3 minutes of footage as opposed to the 45 minute interview. Now I'm very nervous about using them to shoot longer performances.

Anyway, so my discovery from this experience is that a) the battery time gauge doesn't work very well; b) if the battery craps out before the clip is saved you lose it and c) wasabis need to be repurchased regularly. Has anyone else had this experience? Is this typical? I was hoping to avoid throwing down for Canon batteries for my XA10 but I don't want to risk more drop outs...

My camera shut off four times out of the blue yesterday during a wedding, using a Wasabi battery. I've been extremely happy, but I'm starting to get nervous using them now. Maybe they are too good to be true. I don't know.

This is an interesting development! Maybe it shoud be a new thread.
Part of the price ot batteries is quality control and the price/performance trade-off.
Time to check my Wasabis now that they are 6 months old.

I've had decent performacne from Lenmar's with my XL1/GL/XHA1, but 'veI read some unhappy reviews about their LIZ302C which is said tobe a BP827 equivalent.

There are a several other aftermarket equivalents as well, but few reports on user satisfaction yet.

Update: I purchased my Wasabis from Blue Nook, and I looked back at the amazon link where I got them, and they have a 3 year manufacturer warranty. I wrote to Blue Nook and got a very fast response from them, and they said they are shipping me new batteries, I just have to pay a shipping/handling fee. I was very happy with their prompt response and willingness to take care of the problem. With the next ones I'll definitely date them and keep a close eye on them after about 6 months...

Also, I had the shut off problem again when transferring footage from my camera to my computer, again I had about 45 min left on the battery and the camera just shut off all of a sudden.

An observation: Replacement only for shipping costs is nice as far as it goes, especially for non-critical uses/users. But it does not cover the effort to exercise the replacement option, the loss of use waiting for the replacement,or possible loss of video on a paying or otehrwisae important job. Where time is money one unnecesasry trip to the post office can eat up any savings compared to buying a battery that does not fail prematurely.