I picked up three of these things about a year and a half ago. I’ve gotten really inconsistent battery life between the three of them. Two of them have required one (maybe two) changes in that time. The third one seems to need a new battery every two or three months.
Anyone else getting the same behavior or have an idea of what’s going on? I’ve read different things about them going to sleep to save battery. Maybe my rogue button just has a defective sleep cycle? I also can’t rule out the batteries. It seems like all the CR2450 battery listings have at least a handful of reviews saying they’re duds, undercharged, or lose charge quickly.
For as cheap as these things are, I’ve considered just buying a new one, but every time I change the battery it seems to work really well (at least for a few weeks) and that keeps me from replacing it.
Curious to know what battery brand or brands you have tried? I tried to go down the ‘cheap’ button battery route for several different sizes of these and the experience was very bad. Two batteries out of same package and one would last days the other months. After multiple of these experiences, I went back to the named brands with the attached cost and have had good experience.
That does not take away, that the battery reading I get from various zigbee, bluetooth and wifi devices even with good batteries do seem to have anomalies at times.
I went with some cheapy “SurPower” batteries (something like $7 for 10 batteries) from a major online retailer.
The battery readings in HA seem pretty unreliable in terms of letting me know when something is dead or not. Some seem to die out while still reporting 40% and others can make it well under 25%.
I suspect this is the true answer, the name-brand probably gives a more consistent performance battery-to-battery.