Yongnuo 600ex-rt Battery Drain

I recently bought two 600ex-rt's from China

I have had to send both units back as they drained the batteries even when switched off.

The seller seemed to be claiming that they needed to have the batteries removed every time they are switched off - which is completely unacceptable in my opinion and makes then practically unusable.

The batteries actually drained at a quite alarming rate - fully recharged batteries would be at 50% in a couple of hours and completely flat within 8 hours. And thats without being used at all.

I am thinking of buying a couple more from a local supplier (the return costs to China were horrendous) but wondered if this is a known issue affecting all their units and whether it would be better to wait until this is resolved. Or maybe go for the Shanny equivalent when it arrives

Can anyone else who has one of these chip in with their experience of the 600ex-rt

I have no experience with Yongnuo, but for comparison's sake, I bought four 600EX-RTs about a month ago, and loaded them up with Eneloop batteries. I used them lightly a couple of times, and put them away with the batteries still inside.

After reading your post, I pulled the batteries and tested them just now, and the batteries still peg my little battery meter as "Full". This is after a few pops, and a month of sitting. This is what I expected, since the 580EXII's performed the same way.

I was sorely tempted by the price of the Yongnuo 600EX-RT. Thankfully, they were out of stock when I had finally made the decision to move to the 600EX-RT system. So I purchased the Canon branded 600EX-RT. Perhaps this falls under the "you get what you pay for category."

At least with Canon, if something goes wrong, one can send it to Canon, or return it to their local dealer, and not fool around with eBay or Chinese harbor freight. And maybe part of the higher cost of the Canon brand is the vetting, testing, layers of engineering approval, and manufacturing quality procedures that are not necessarily seen on the outside, but might be evidenced by issues like this, and the issues reported about the YN568 also.

Maybe it is worth just getting your money back for the YN600's if you still can, and applying the funds toward used Canon 580EXIIs and the YN622 trigger system instead? Or just get the real deal and be done with it?

On edit, there are even issues and updates of the YN622 triggering system, that I just read about for the first time here: https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1413243, where some YN622 have much shorter range than others.

I've never read about Canon having to update a printed circuit board on a flash model they have already released. But it appears that Yongnuo undergoes several midcycle production updates, and the cost of the product ticks up with each change. Perhaps that is the price to be paid for trying to find the cheapest way to produce a product... it doesn't always work the first or second time around. But it gets closer to the standard it seeks to copy with each attempt.

https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=17244002

That seems to be for the YN-E3-RT trigger

Interestingly I bought one of those at the same time and that doesn't suffer from battery drain at all.

It does seem to be patchy as some people are reporting no issues with battery drain on the 600ex.

I have ordered 2 more from a local supplier who claim they test all theirs before sending them out. I am a bit sceptical of that claim but at least if they are a local supplier its not too much to send them back (again lol)

This battery draining is definitely a fact for their YN-E3 RT Radio controller that I am sure about.
Maybe same thing happens to their speedlites too ...

I leave the battery's in my yn-568ex's and they are always good to go even after still for a couple weeks.

So they should not be doing that. I'd say send them back and get a different flash or wait for yongnuo to fix the issue.

Correct the thread I linked to was a discussion about yn-e3-rt battery drain. However in it I mentioned that I had experienced that problem with mine and one of their battery pack clones as well. Now that there's a report of it happening with the yn 600rt. I'm left wondering if there isn't a flaw in some of their systems. It will be interesting to see if yours is an isolated case, or something more widespread. I was looking to add some yn's to the three Canons I already have. But think I'll wait and see how things shake out.

I have two Canon 600EX-RT's that have no battery drain issues but I also own a Yongnuo YN-E3-RT that drains batteries fairly quickly when switched off. The fact that the same behavior is now showing up in at least some YN600-EX-RT's is very disappointing. At best it means their general quality control is poor. The more troubling conclusion is that they have a shared serious design flaw in all their RT clone products. I agree with the OP that the suggestion to just take all the batteries out every day is completely unacceptable. I was contemplating adding a couple of the Yongnuo branded 600's to my Canon units. After learning of this issue I'll wait and see if the upcoming Shanny 600 looks good or just bite the bullet and get more of the Canon branded units that I know to work flawlessly.

^^^^
I agree. The early reports on the Shanny look good but I'd like to see what others think as they actually use them.

I have ordered a couple more from a UK supplier

I asked about the batter drain issue and they said all their units are tested before they are sent out (not sure I believe this)

They are due on Wednesday so will report back then

Some other users are reporting having this issue too so it isn't just me - it doesn't seem to be everyone though as far as I can tell.

cteksys wrote in post #17362286
I have ordered a couple more from a UK supplier

I asked about the batter drain issue and they said all their units are tested before they are sent out (not sure I believe this)

They are due on Wednesday so will report back then

Some other users are reporting having this issue too so it isn't just me - it doesn't seem to be everyone though as far as I can tell.

Good luck to you. Not all of the YN-E3-RT transmitters have the battery drain issue so let's hope it's just a quality control issue with the 600's.

Thank you WillMass! The correlation is worth considering.

I have the YNE3RT. No battery drain issue.
My Yongnuo 2nd batch 600EXRT does have it though... no other user on FlashHavoc has reported otherwise. Must be on all of them... hope Yongnuo addresses this
A minor tradeoff for a 600EX copy though

I'm considering adding a yn 600 to the arsenal and was wondering if there were any updates, or additional issues. Thanks!

They are now available from the official hkyongnuophotoequipmen​t store on ebay.

I guess you could ask them if they have solved the battery issue, just to be sure.