Felco 24V 5000mAh Replacement Battery 82/82A

My Felco 82 cuts about halfway through pruning and then just stops mid-cut — why does it keep dying before the job is done?

This is a thermal cutoff triggering inside the Ni-MH pack, not a capacity problem. Ni-MH cells at 24V heat up fast under the sustained high-current draw of repeated cuts through thick stems, and the battery's protection circuit shuts it down to prevent cell damage. Let the pack cool for 10–15 minutes and it will usually restart — if it does, that confirms thermal cutoff rather than a dead cell. To verify the pack is still healthy and not just heat-stressed, charge it fully and check the terminal voltage under no load: a good 24V Ni-MH should read between 25.2V and 28.8V.

The charger light went solid green almost immediately after I plugged in the new Felco battery — is it actually charged or did it just skip the cycle?

Ni-MH chargers use a delta-V peak-detection method to sense a full charge, and a deeply discharged or storage-drained pack can fool that circuit into reading "full" before any real charge has gone in. This is called a false peak, and it's common in 24V Ni-MH packs that have been sitting. Pull the pack off, wait two minutes, and check the terminal voltage with a multimeter — a genuinely full 24V Ni-MH should read above 25V; anything below 24V means the charger quit early. If it reads low, some chargers have a "refresh" or "reconditioning" mode that applies a slow charge first — use that if yours has it.

I fitted the replacement battery on my Felco 82 and the blade moves but feels weak — it's not cutting clean like before, what's wrong?

Slow or weak blade movement on a fresh battery usually points to voltage sag under load, where the pack can't sustain the current the motor demands at the moment of the cut. On Ni-MH chemistry this happens when cells are cold (under 10°C / 50°F) or when the pack has been stored discharged and the cells haven't reformed yet. Run two or three full charge-discharge cycles before judging performance — Ni-MH cells recover capacity through cycling after storage. If it still feels sluggish after conditioning, measure voltage at the tool's battery terminals during a cut: a reading that drops below 21V under load signals a weak cell in the pack.