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H4N heavy battery drain
I have been using a Zoom H4N for about two years with my DSLR kit. My biggest frustration is its battery consumption. I use Ansman 2700 mAH rechargeable batteries and get just about an hour from them in continuous use. The battery level fluctuates while recording and sometimes goes down to just one bar and then it comes back to two bars. I am not using phantom powering. I wonder if other people have encountered the same problem. It could be that my H4N is faulty!!
The most annoying thing is that if the battery runs down low then the unit switches off and you lose the complete file!
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9 Replies
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Have you tried standard / non rechargeable batteries in the H4N?
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Yes, ordinary Duracell batteries don’t last over an hour either. I wonder if my H4N is malfunctioning now, it’s never been very good running with batteries – sadly.
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HI,
I shoot for quite a while with the Lenmar brand (Samy’s Camera) and have yet to lose signal, even going for a few hours on stereo on board X/Y.
Is it possible the batteries you have are losing punch?
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The Ansman batteries are virtually new. I have three sets and they just keep going for hours in my Canon 430 EX2 speed light on full power. H4N has really frustrated me no end, though I love the functionality of it.
I have a 6 volt high capacity battery pack if I were to power it externally but H4N required only 5 volts – don’t know if it will damage the recorder.
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Sorry, sounds like a big problem for sure.
Check the milliamps on the wall wart which came with the Zoom, then see if the battery pack, senses input device voltage requirements.
Many devices sense circuitry needs these days and that may work because it bypasses the battery cage (assumed?).
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I feel like mine does the same thing. I once had a shoot and the zoom was literally draining brand new batteries in like 5 minutes. I ended up doing a factory restart and that helped, so maybe try that. I knew someone that said they were going thru batteries like crazy and it was a short circuit in the zoom
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I have an H-4 for sale if you’re interested.
Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.netSony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro Tower, Quad Core,
with Final Cut StudioHP i7 Quad laptop
Adobe CS-5 Production Suite -
I came across this post in a google search and just wanted to say that factory resetting my unit prolonged seemed to solve the battery life issue.
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Thank you for taking time to reply to my thread. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to make much difference to my machine.
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