The 8 Best CR2025 Batteries

Editor's Notes

April 06, 2021:

Most of our picks of CR2025 batteries from the previous update are still in this list, apart from the Duracell, which I’ve removed because I think it’s a tad expensive now compared to other options. Apart from that, you can probably observe for yourself that our list promotes brand variety, as well as affordability, with all options falling between 30¢ to a little over a buck per unit.

The Duracell on the other hand was selling for more than twice as much as the second most expensive unit in our list, and did very little to justify that cost, since CR2025 batteries are, by definition, 170 milliamp-hour batteries, so you’re not going to find massive fundamental differences like battery and shelf life between brands. I believe that this was just the case of a name brand taking liberties by massively inflating prices, and I’d love to reintroduce the brand to this list, since I’m fond of their batteries, but not until they bring their cost per unit down a little.

February 16, 2020:

The first thing I always like to do with any list involving batteries is to see whether the current options still offer fresh cells, as many sellers like to buy in bulk, and as a result, can often end up supplying you with older packets of cells that might contain duds. After all, no one wants cells that are DOA (Dead On Arrival). With regard to this, the GloFX Lithium Buttons and Energizer 10-Pack seemed to be struggling with quality issues, so they’ve been removed or replaced.

Unfortunately, I also had to remove the Chao Chuang 20-Pack and AmVolt 8-Pack because they were struggling with availability issues. The Chao Chuang is some generic Chinese option that isn’t going to be a huge miss from this list, but it’s a real shame that I couldn’t find any replacement AmVolt CR2025 packets, because the company makes some great button cells, but I’ve recently found many of them struggling with availability issues, not just CR2025 cells - I don’t know if they’re rolling back on manufacturing of button cells to focus on producing larger batteries, or perhaps I’m just overreacting.

For replacements, I’ve looked at a couple of things, namely, my understanding of the cells’ reliability and their cost per unit. Fortunately, I found packages like the LiCB 10-Pack and Celewell 5-Pack, which are both great options from brands that I’m quite familiar with. The Celewell quotes a capacity of 170 mAh, which is higher than the average 150-160 mAh for CR2025 cells, though I couldn’t tell you how accurate their claim is, since I don’t have a discharge curve from the lab – but I’m trusting them on this.

Among many of the generic options that were disappointing to say the least, I did manage to pick up the Skoanbe 5-Pack. The cells have Japanese writing on them, so the manufacturer is probably Japanese, and they are definitely fresh as the advertised batch was supposedly manufactured in October 2019, so they’ll be good till 2023, according to them, which seems about right, as lithium cells have a self-discharge rate of around 10% in 5 years. Just a note with regards to primary cells, a lithium-based battery is denoted by CR to differentiate it from alkaline (LR) and silver-oxide (SR) cells. Also, the first 2 digits of a button cell denote its diameter, and the second 2 denote the thickness multiplied by 10; so, a CR2025 cell has a diameter of 20 mm and a thickness of 2.5 mm.

Also, there’s been some speculation regarding whether the Philips Lithium Minicell pack is a counterfeit from some Chinese company, and I can’t tell you whether this is true, but it’s still a good option with fresh cells that seem quite reliable, and so I’ve left it in.