Re: Recharagble batteries?
Sorry to revive this post, but ive been looking at chargers for 2 weeks and havent made my mind up yet... From what some people have said, the Powerex MH-C 9000 is the best charger, but has anyone tried the Sanyo charger that the batteries come with? From what I gather, one of the main advantages of the powere MH-C 9000 is that it recharges batteries quickly, Im planning on buying 2 sets of batteries, so I will always have spares, so fast charging really isnt a priority for me... Are there any other benefits to the MH C9000? Will it maintain the batteries in better condition that the Sanyo one? I find it hard to justify spending the extra money on the MH-C 9000 if the Sanyo one will charge them and maintain them just as well....
I have a MH-C9000, and I love it. Certainly it is excellent, and has many features. While certainly better than some, it is not necessarily better or faster than all (but you can change its default charge rate of 1 amp to be from 0.2 amp to 2 amps). Maha says rates too slow make it hard to detect the cutoff point properly, and too fast gets too hot. If you just insert the batteries and walk away, it does 1 amp, which is ideal for Eneloops. 1 amp means a 2000 mah battery will charge in 2 hours if fully discharged (2 hour rate is called 1/2 C), but they never are fully discharged, and one hour is more common for me.
Here is the MH-C9000 manual, you can see what features it has:
http://www.mahapowerex.eu/user-manuals/mh-c9000-manual-en.pdf
The LCD reporting is nice. The many features are nice. But here's the big deal. The cheap chargers are too dumb to monitor the batteries properly. Some just charge for a fixed time and then cut off... but this is without regard for the size of the battery, or its initial state of dischange (or its needs). Some just charge until the batteries get too hot, and then cut off. That can work, but the better smart chargers actually monitor the voltage on each battery (but also watch temperature too).
Sanyo chargers surely know what they are doing, surely better than some, it would be my choice in a cheap charger). But they are inexpensive chargers. Notice that inexpensive 4-cell chargers have two LED status lights (this Sanyo charger too), but better smart chargers have four LED status lights. The cheap chargers charge two cells in series, and are unable to monitor the two cells individually. If one cell is at a lower charge state, or partially defective (going bad), this disrupts the overall picture, and the good cell suffers from being treated the same. Better smart changers are effectively four chargers in one, with four status LEDs (and four monitoring circuits), and these monitor individual cells, and each cell gets what it needs, no more, no less. My notion is that we need at least that much (four LED status reports, one for each battery).
All the Maha chargers are smart, and all are quite good. I also have a Maha C-401FS, no LCD but it has the four LEDs and is a smart charger. It has a switch to select two charge rates, one is the proper 1 amp rate and one is much slower. Its cost is not much different than the C9000 however. They also make excellent eight cell chargers.
You are definitely not interested in this one charge lasting weeks or months anyway. But many other casual users definitely are.
