Lithium batteries hold their charge longer, so once charged you can just charge the stun cane every few months and you're good. The NIMH batteries lose something like 1% of their charge per day, so you need to charge them monthly. Not a huge deal if you're organized. The lithiums also carry more charge in the same size battery, and they don't have the memory issue...if you put a NIMH battery on charge and then take it off when it's 90% charged, it can cause the battery to not take a full 100% charge in future. Again, if you're organized and put the cane on charge the first Saturday of every month for hours, so it charges fully, then there's no issue.