As someone who uses a lot of batteries I disagree. I do a lot of field recording work using powered microphones and that can mean going through 20+ batteries a day. Rechargeables would be ideal but that means a bunch of extra gear to cart around and extra things to go wrong or be overlooked by an assistant. Doing location work for film it's common to have 12+18 hour workdays where you're on your feet all the time, and working in a different location every day or ever multiple locations in the same day.
Long story short I've had terrible experiences with generic batteries. I haven't done exhaustive comparisons with the various leading brands, but I've come to strongly prefer Duracells. I have no idea what the watt/$ ratio is because I just expense that; what I care about is reliability in a high power drain situation.
For consumer stuff sure, most batteries are quite good. I wish it was a business on the decline, I'd be thrilled to have efficient short-range wireless power even if it only had a range of a meter or two.
Note: All Rayovac batteries used were confirmed to be alkaline batteries and the Sunbeam batteries it appears are not alkaline. This may have been the reason for the subpar results I experienced yet I question why the Rayovac alkalines I used produced very similar results to the allegedly non-alkaline Sunbeams.
Xbox 360 controller: I've used Sunbeam and Rayovac AA batteries from the dollar store and CVS, respectively. They barely last a week and when I hit the dashboard button to check the state of charge it still shows 2 and sometimes 3 bars but the controller kept disconnecting. Tried 3 other controllers and 3 other battery packs to verify it wasn't a controller/battery holder problem. Same results. Switched to Duracell and not only do they last almost a month but they go all the way until the battery icon is empty and then they cut out. I now use Energizer rechargeable NiMH batteries and they last almost as long as the duracells but I can swap them out quickly.
Paintball marker: I have a relatively high end (it was top of the line back in 2007) paintball marker that I'd been experiencing problems with where it would turn off in the middle of games. At the time I was, again, using either Sunbeam or Rayovac 9V batteries from the dollar store or CVS. I found an old duracell 9V and tested it. It had about half a charge left, perhaps a little more. I put that in and it went strong for a few months and many games before finally crapping out.
Ditto same results for my paintball loader which takes 6 AA batteries or 2 9V batteries. Sunbeam and Rayovac barely worked for a little while but Duracells kept on trucking for a long time.
Ham radio: I have an AA adapter pack for my handheld ham radio but this time it was a 3 way comparison with Sunbeam and Rayovac again taking a distant 3rd place, a rechargeable Maha battery taking 1st and Duracells nipping at the heels of the rechargeable battery for signal strength and general usability when I needed it most.
All that being said and taking into consideration those experiences, all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors in the house have Duracells in them as I'll be damned if I'm going to take a chance on the generic batteries again.
P.S. I still can't convince my mom to buy Duracells as she insists on getting the generic batteries and then keeps complaining to me that dad gets frustrated that the TV remote "doesn't work like it used to!" (Note: It had Duracells in it for a while before they finally died and were replaced with...Sunbeams!)
The current requirements are not that high so it's just a matter of a small step-up transformer for the preamp. Some older pro microphones also use T-power, which requires only 12v but delivers a somewhat less good signal/noise ratio than the 48v phantom standard.
From my perspective, I haven't bought an alkaline battery in years. Low self-discharge batteries (especially newer Eneloops) are so much better for most tasks that disposable batteries seem crazy.
It'd be nice if there were a voltage regulator product that could fit into a standard battery compartment.
One option I've considered is to replace 2AA/2AAA with Li-Ion plus a dummy cell. But Li-Ion is around 4.2 volts fully charged, which might be too much.
I get my alkaline AA's from Harbor Freight! $4 for 24. Never had a problem with them.
Duracell is for suckers. Their slogan is "Duracell is the #1 trusted brand of parents, pharmacists and first responders." Huh?
I tested name brands and the drug store house brand. Within experimental errors, they all had the same lifetime.
If you bought the cheapest battery on the shelf, then it probably wasn't an alkaline battery. A heavy-duty battery (carbon-zinc) has half the capacity of an alkaline.
If you buy Duracell, you know you will get at least an alkaline battery. Duracell simply does not sell heavy-duty batteries, hence the brand name: the durable cell. It's mostly a matter of brand positioning, rather than technology.
Rayovac uses one brand for both alkaline and heavy-duty batteries, which cheapens their brand when a consumer buys the wrong type and all the batteries die a quick death. Energizer addresses this problem by selling heavy-duty batteries under the Everready brand.
The carbon-chloride battery is labeled as "heavy-duty," because it has greater capacity than the carbon-zinc battery ("general-purpose").
When alkaline batteries were invented, the older chemistry continued to be sold as heavy-duty. This leads to the strange situation where the heavy-duty battery has less capacity than the other batteries you find on the shelf.
So in my experience generics are actually better; Golden Sunrise or whatever, I don't care so long as they are on spec and don't ruin my gadgets.