I haven't seen a thread like this around recently, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to put this information out there and allow for others to post their experiences as well. It seems that, overall, coin cell battery quality has declined dramatically in recent years and has become a bit of a mine field. Since most tend to work out of the box only to wear out or start corroding prematurely, I think this is good information to share.

And before people mention it, yes, I'm aware that you can buy one Duracell coin-cell for $5 and it is pretty much always going to work. I don't want to go that way myself since I deal with fairly large volumes of boards and machines and the price adds up quickly. Hopefully others will benefit from the time I've spent trying to find the best batteries for the money over the past few years.

The format of this will basically just be the name of batteries I have recent experiences with, the verdict (good or bad?), when and where purchased, their intended use, and what happened to them.

To start off...

MuRata CR2032 Lithium coin cells - Purchased in October 2022 = Two 50 packs were VERY BAD! Lots of defects. - Bought a huge pack of these from DigiKey to keep on hand for projects and they all had tiny bits of weird brown residue in the package, seemingly from the seals. The seal (between the + and - halves) were sort of chunky and brown looking, not smooth, black and uniform like basically every 2032 I've ever used or pulled out of a 25+ year old motherboard. I contacted Digikey and they sent me a whole replacement pack of them and when I looked the replacements over they looked similar, if slightly better. I was frustrated but figured that maybe this was just the new norm and this is the quality of CR2032 we're going to get now.

Fast forward two years to 2024 and I'd been putting these into computers and old boards for a while... I had 10 or so in a battery holder and noticed that several had a white, hazy\tarnished look creeping out from around the edges, mostly over the bottom or top faces of the batteries. When I went into my stockpile to get more out (in an my air conditioned office...) I see that MANY of the ones still in the original storage packs\bags are doing the same thing! At this point, it's too late to expect a refund, but I contact digikey anyway, and they obviously don't do anything. So, MuRata either had a bad batch and no one cared to stand behind the product being sold at an electronics distributor, or they are just garbage in general.

Toshiba CR2032 Lithium coin cells (Yellow Pack; mentions Japan but made in PRC\China) - Purchased in December 2024. = So far, good! - After getting burned by what was presented as a brand name product from a reputable seller (MuRata from DigiKey), I spent hours researching and trying to figure out what brand may actually be decent. I guess a lot of companies that used to do in-house battery manufacturing in Japan or Switzerland (Renata) now mostly import them from China anyway. So, most brands are a roll of the dice as to whether you're getting one manufactured competently (and not 10 years ago), or one that is complete garbage and likely to fail or corrode. I saw good comments in a few places about Toshiba's yellow-package batteries manufactured in China being among of the better ones. I bought some in December of last year and I'm happy to say that all of the ones I've used have worked great, the ones in the packages have no corrosion on them, they are shiny and the seals are black like they're supposed to be. If they haven't changed since 2024, I think these are a good buy for a budget CR2032.

LOOPACELL SR927SW, 395 Silver Oxide 1.55v Coin Cells - Purchased February 2020 = okay; Purchased March 2023 = HORRIBLE! - I use these for a tiny LED lit jeweler's magnifier that I use to inspect tiny components on boards very quickly. I used to use LR927\AG7 alkaline batteries but found that they were all trash and would be corroded or half dead when I received them or would corrode within a year, either inside a device or in storage. I had read that Silver Oxide batteries tended to be higher quality and less prone to leakage\corrosion, so I found cheap ones and gave them a try. First batch of 10 purchased in 2020 seemed to be fine and lasted me a few years with no issues that I recall. I purchased 25 more in 2023 and I'm not sure exactly when I first used this pack (probably late last year), but only a couple are missing from the 5x packages from this order right now... sadly, every single one of them is corroded. The ones in my magnifier, and all of the ones in the 5 packages. So yeah... avoid these. If they were good originally, they became garbage at some point.

Renata SR927SW, SR57, 395 Silver Oxide 1.55v Coin Cells - Purchased October 2025, not tested yet. - I was under the impression that Renata (Swiss company) was still manufacturing all of their batteries in China, but the datasheet for these is marked "Swiss Made", so who knows. Regardless of where they were made, these are currently being sold on DigiKey's marketplace through "BatteryGuy", and surprisingly have free shipping. So, the price is competitive (10 batteries for $8.60 + tax), the name brand is good and it's being sold through a battery seller, for whatever that's worth. They could turn out to be garbage, or super outdated, but I was willing to give them a try. The Renata ones being sold on Amazon have lots of reviews saying they are old stock (and they cost more), so we'll see if these are from that same pool or not. They can't be as bad as the Loopacells... right? - DigiKey canceled my order for the Renata SR927 batteries. I guess the marketplace seller was out of stock. 🙄

ACDelco UltraMAX AA and UltraMAX AAA Alkaline batteries - Purchased a few times from 2022 to 2024 = No problems to speak of. - I picked up several large packs of Duracell Quantum (no longer sold) AA and AAA batteries at a local discount store in 2019 and they lasted a while, but several ending up leaky in whatever devices I had them in. As those ran out, I did more battery research and found some reviews that pointed to these ACDelco UltraMAX batteries being good and reliable, especially for the price. At this point, I have used lots of them over the past three years and never had any problems at all. None have leaked and none were DOA. I actually trust putting these in 3xAA or 3xAAA battery packs to act as CMOS batteries in old pre-CR2032 systems, and have had no issues. I will update this if I ever find any leaking. As of October 2025, I highly recommend these for basic AA and AAA batteries on a budget.

For now, that's all I have to post. I may come up with more later though. 😀