Good charger bad charger.

Referring to the comment of "cheap knock off" concerning the 7DAYSHOP charger I linked to, I've never had a problem with mine. I've never had AA or AAA cells get down to 0v either and therefore are not too worried about dead battery recovery. I've been using AA rechargeable regularly since 1977, back when they were nicads of 500mA capacity. Then, they were charged overnight at 50mA rate prior to flying radio controlled aircraft. No issues. No "smart" chargers around then.

At the time that Delta peak chargers became available, they were a step foreword as they prevented overcharge. I had my own brand on the market which I designed and built specifically to use with the R/C electric car and buggy batteries which were 1200mA sub C batteries. I also manufactured a cycler and pulse charger.

Once dedicated battery charger IC's became available, I incorporated those as they were very good at monitoring charge and temperature. Like all things, LSI and far East manufacturing made it non profitable to manufacture these items so I closed the business as far as R/C products were concerned and diversified into industrial electronics.

Are there bad chargers out there? Yes, plenty.

Being realistic though, you can pay more than necessary for a good, functional charger. My main concern is that it needs to be 12V powered as I use it when away and at events such as bike shows or model flying competitions where I can power it from the 12V vehicle battery.

I use my "cheap knock off" charger to charge various brand AA and AAA cells and have no complaints whatsoever and have never had any failure of cells or poor charge/capacity issues.

Nothing wrong with recommending a top quality piece of kit that's all singing and all dancing, but if your never going to need it to dance?

Everyone's free to spend their money on what and how they like. You make a choice.

Best regards

Anyone accidentally leaving a flashgun switched until the the batteries go flat will have at least one cell at 0V and the others so close to 0 that they won't charge.

This is quite a good video showing the difference between the German Technoline and a Chinese copy. The reviewer discharged 4 batteries to 0V by leaving them in a torch switched on. I'm surprised the clone wouldn't even charge a battery with 0.37V in it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e0uZbxBQnw

Any 0V batteries will need at least TWO charge discharge cycles to bring them back into use. Running any battery right down should be avoided.

The cost of these chargers is unimportant when you take the life expectancy and battery recovery into account. Mine cost £30 and It's still as good as new after 8 years. That's less than £4 year. It's saved me a lot more in batteries it's brought back to life.

Youshiko and 7 Day are reported to be the same
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXrdEmymF2w

What is it they do to Knock-Off Rolex's
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Chargers are one area where I will NEVER buy anything other than an official product from a manufacturer.

A cheap charger can easily set your house on fire if it has not been manufactured correctly. Why anyone would take the risk is beyond me.

Just to be clear I am stating this as a general principle. The chargers refered to in this thread may well be fine. But when most folk don't do the research and just look for the cheapest price on Amazon it is a dangerous game.

WRT to leaving a flashgun switched on, a battery being 0v with others close to zero is, in practice, not going to happen. Nicads and NiMh cells in series left in circuit will go flat and the first cell in the pack to reach 0v will then be reverse charged by action of the other cells continuing to discharge. This is a well known issue for series cells left to go flat. Once the cells are removed to be recharged and if checked with a DVM, the low cell will show recovery voltage and appear to be 0v.

I use a capacity analyser on my batteries. True constant current discharge to a predetermined trip voltage (1v in my case) over the time taken. I have several mixed packs based on the true capacity of each cell. I built mine but they are available, typically like this link

The guy on YT says that the Youshiko is a blatant rip off of the 7Day one. It's irrelevant, they are made in the same Chinese factory.

I have no doubts about the Technoline abilities or quality. If my 7DayShop charger fails or ever damages a battery, I can move up to a Technoline.

Best regards

How would you rate the energiser /duracell battery chargers?

Regards

I do have a basic energiser 2/4 cell AAA/AA charger that's a good few years old. It's nothing fancy and has two fixed charge rates for AAA/AA respectively. It gets used from time to time to slow charge cells. It is not automatic in any way. Other than that, I have no user experience with the modern Energiser or Duracell chargers.

Basic points to remember:

NiMH batteries don't suffer any memory effect as did sintered Ni-Cads, so can be topped up from various states of charge.

Without an intelligent type of charger, they can be overcharged. So any "automatic cut off" charger will work.

Consider how fast you want to charge your cells, look at the charger types available.

Fast charge on mainstream chargers can normally vary from 3hrs to 1hr.

Fast charge to me is fifteen minutes or less from flat but I don't do this with today's AA cells. I do have several sets of cells I bought in the USA that do charge in 15mins! They are specials and have a dedicated charger. link They work really well.

Having a top of the line, state of the art charger is never a bad thing. Do you need one? Only the end user can justify that.

Battery technology has progressed very well over the years and using top quality cells (Enerloop types) with an automatic cut off charger will give years of trouble free service. A 12v power option is an advantage.

Best regards

I have seen the energiser/ duracell chargers sold in supermarkets and diy stores in Glasgow. I am sure they charge individual cells.
I currently use a Lidl battery charger , but was lloking at something portable.

K10 d and Barkin , thank you for your replies.

Regards

That was a point I missed Ian. It is a big benefit to have each cell individually charged.

There are those who never use rechargeable batteries. Two people I used to shoot with in Oz used only Lithium AA's in their flash guns.

Here's a link that has some interesting data concerning flash and batteries. The author uses Nikon flash data but obviously the same variables apply to Pentax and third party flashes we use on Pentax. link

Best regards