I think if we sold daily short-term use items with sealed AA/AAA with the amount of sales as disposable vapes, we'd be having the same discussion about AA/AAA batteries now. But we don't. Aside from anomalies like, say, the Gameboy or Game Gear, traditional batteries are used in things like remotes or smoke detectors, where you might need to replace the batteries every few months.
> Aside from anomalies like, say, the Gameboy or Game Gear
And at the time there weren't good rechargable options. If modern NiMH had existed a few years earlier, lasting just as long as alkaline for a dollar each, they would have been the normal power source for those hungry devices.
I had an external battery pack for my Gameboy, could play and charge off the wall at the same time.
IIRC, no indicator of charge, just had to guess based on the contrast setting. I think it did eventually fail to hold a charge, but it lasted several years, at least. Not as good as NiMH from several years later though, but it was better than buying batteries all the time.
Someone in the reviews posted test results and found they only had a 253-333mAh capacity at 1.5v (so 0.5Wh). 10440 lithium-ion cells (which closely match AAA size) have 250-350mAh at 3.7v (say, 1.295Wh).
If they actually had the 1200mAh capacity they say they'd have 1.8Wh which is much higher than a straight lithium-ion cell without the charging and voltage regulation circuitry taking up space.
Yeah, this worries me a bit! Never seen any issues, and I'm only using them in low-impact environments (keyboards + mice), and only charging while present.