Asklemmy

They don't last as long and have less charge cycles, but IIRC they have a larger charge capacity. Eneloop white batteries have 4x more recharge cycles than the Eneloop black batteries. Hard to justify larger capacity (2550 mAh for black, 2100 for white) at 1/4 of the lifespan/charge cycles.

Some people use them for specific things like gamepad controllers (i.e. X-Box/Playstation controllers) because you're less likely to have interruptions but personally, I just change batteries when I dip below 30%. I keep 4 spare AAs in a charging cradle (La Crosse Technology, apparently they don't make chargers anymore which came as a huge surprise because they were THE battery charger back in the day 🤓). I use a program on my PC for keyboard macros that has an additional feature displaying gamepad battery percentage and I find it far more accurate than the native app or alternatives.

To me it's like having a 16 gal gas tank and some guy tries to tell you he can swap it out for a 20 gal gas tank, but then you find out the "upgrade" has 1/4 of the lifespan because it's far more likely to corrode. Not worth the tradeoff for the vast majority of drivers who can simply fill up a little more often.

It's a gimmick to basically upsell people an additional battery type that in fairness to Panasonic is literally right on the packaging (2100 vs 500 charge cycles) but unless you're actively comparing charge cycles between battery types, which the vast majority of people buying batteries aren't paying attention to because they (reasonably, IMO) assume all AA batteries have a similar life cycle/capacity these days, it's hard to notice the above differences that I pointed out. So a lot of people buy the white, then the black thinking "ooOoOO Pro edition = better", only to find out 2+ years later that their black batteries are dead while their white batteries keep chugging along.

I know that's a super long winded explanation but I think it's good to explain all this. I mostly recommend Eneloop whites because I'm not a big fan of waste, battery waste in particular, so I think that if someone has to use batteries then it makes sense for them to use the ones that are reasonably priced and will last far longer than any other battery. That said, the price of them definitely has gone up over the years, though that applies to most things.