So you got yourself an a6000, a6300, or if you've snagged a pre-order because they're out of stock EVERYWHERE, an a6500.

The Sony battery shipped with the camera lasts about an hour when shooting 4K so you'll probably find yourself faced with the need for extra power. Do you get more Sony batteries, which are a tad expensive, or take your chances with the cheaper off brands?

I purchased both the a6300 and the a6500 off of Amazon and both times the recommended batteries were Wasabi. It actually took a bit of hunting to find the Sony brand batteries.

After doing the overheating test last week between the a6300 and the a6500 I was curious how the batteries would test against each other. During that test I noticed a couple differences but since the test wasn't about batteries I decided to dedicated a test to the batteries themselves.

We had a rather elaborate setup to test the batteries.

Each camera was set on a tripod with the same settings. This time we made sure face detection and stabilization was turned off.

Their settings were:

Manual Movie Mode

Manual Exposure

XAVC S 4K File Format

30P 100M Record Setting

1/50 Shutter

F.8.0 Aperture

640 ISO

Automatic White Balance (AWB)

The cameras were recording a YouTube documentary, running on a laptop. My Kindle Fire was the timer again, set below the cameras. My brothers's Canon T2i recorded the whole thing, using my Rokinon 14mm lens.

After we hit record and play on everything, we just sat back and watched the battery drain. I kept tabs on the percentages and temperatures at each 30 minute interval.

Since we didn't want the cameras overheating, my brother hooked up a case fan to a power supply and pointed it at the a6300. When you have a ton of spare computer parts laying around, improvisation is key....

The Sony batteries performed as I expected. They lasted about an hour and had a reliable percentage readout. The yellow low battery warning indicator came on at 01:03:08 on the a6300 and 01:04:00 on the a6500. The a6300 shut off from the battery dying at 01:11:50 and the a6500 shut off at 01:13:30. I view the low battery indicator like the empty gas light in a car. There's a reserve so you still have some run time before there's no juice left.

The Wasabis performed in a similar manner, but there are some caveats...

Before the low battery indicator came on the Wasabis, their percentage readout was inaccurate. Soon after the hour mark on both cameras, the yellow indicator came on, but the percentages read 15% for the a6300 and 27% for the a6500. What's up with that?

It wasn't till the third and final test that I really began to struggle using the Wasabi batteries. First of all, I couldn't get one of them to charge to 100%. Well after the charging light turned green on both the wall charger and a USB dual charger, the battery still wouldn't go above 95%. I gave up after awhile and we just started the test anyway. Unfortunately the SD card in the a6500 filled before the test could fully conclude but by that point the battery was really acting up. It shut off with a readout of 47%.

I had four Wasabi batteries, two of which I bought specifically before this test and they arrived the day we conducted it. Out of four batteries, one was bad. That's a pretty huge margin of error.

Long before I conducted this test, even before I did the overheating test, I'd noticed the Wasabi batteries lose charge when they're not on the charger. Since I was mostly home all the time it wasn't really an issue since I could continually pop them on the charger. However, I'm about to move to Japan and while I'm there I am most definitely not spending all my time at home. I'm glad I conducted this test before I left because it helped me realize I needed at least one more Sony battery for reliability when I'm out and about.

Luckily, one of the Wasabis I noticed holds its charge even after half a day. Definitely holding onto that one.

Also, in case anyone is interested, I also timed how long it took each battery to charge after fully dying.

Wasabi: 02:20:xx

Sony: 02:28:xx

Sadly, after today, I am returning both the a6300 and half the Wasabi batteries I bought. I leave for Japan tomorrow and won't have time for much else till I'm settled there.

If there's any more tests you'd like to see with the a6500 though...let me know! I'm having a lot of fun doing these.

Thanks for reading!

- V