This morning, the Gadget3 crew sauntered over to Chevron House in the CBD to check out Panasonic's new creation, the Evolta battery. By using new ways to pack a lot of power into an alkaline battery the same size as your regular AA and AAA batties, the Evolta has become the longest lasting battery, and it has a Guiness Book of Records listing to prove it.

Of course, Panasonic wasn't about to just flash a Guiness Book of Records seal and be done with that, so they proved it to us with a couple of helicopters. Find out more below!

When we got there, they were playing videos of their new little robot climbing the Grand Canyon, powered only by a single AA-sized Evolta battery. Unfortunately this little guy is not in Singapore yet, but hopefully it will swing by sometime soon and scale the Singapore Flyer!

After that, Panasonic's Assistant GM Philip Chua made a nice little introduction to their new little powerhouse, and showed us a short video of why this battery is so technologically advanced. There was a whole bunch of jargon about reducing excess space to cram in more zinc, but it pretty much boils down to a more advanced design that has more juice and greater safety features. Which is great because you don't want any batteries exploding in your TV remote control.

To prove just how much longer the Evolta lasts, they tested it against their regular alkaline batteries by sticking the batteries into a couple of test helicopters. Just like a magician, they asked for a volunteer to load the batteries in order to be fair and certain. As nobody else volunteered, yours truly got to load batteries. Cos as you know, loading batteries into this is like my hidden super-mutant talent.

After I loaded up the batteries, I was about to press the big red button to activate the helicopter test, but just like magicians, they wanted a female volunteer to do that. So I sat my male butt back onto the seat, and some random female volunteer got to push the big red button and activate the helicopters.

The helicopters took off, and they spent a great deal of time in the air. Even the regular alkaline battery lasted a long time in the air. A really long time in the air. We even had time to have some snacks, chit-chat, and watch most of the Godfather Part II (okay, maybe not the last one). But eventually, the Evolta battery-powered chopper won out.

What Simon and I noticed was that not only did the Evolta chopper last longer, but the rotors seemed to be spinning faster too. Not that we can count the exact number of RPMs or anything (my mutant powers can only go that far), but it was definitely noticeable.

Anyway, these batteries are definitely going to be something useful. Singaporeans use about 22 million alkaline batteries a year, and reported 15 percent of those come from Panasonic. With the new Evolta, they hope to raise that percentage due to the longer lasting nature of these batteries. They might cost a bit more, but the additional juice and the added convenience of not needing to dig around for spare batteries in your drawers every few days should more than make up for the price increase (about 20 percent more than regular batteries).

The Evoltas will set you back about SGD6.90 for a four-pack of AA/AAA batteries, and SGD3.50 for a two-pack. The road show is still there at Chevron house till tomorrow, so feel free to drop in and try it out for yourself, and play with the helicopters!