This is probaly the best charger on the Market.

[wade7575]

I got this charger about 2 weeks ago and have been extremely impressed with it so far,it is Maha MH-C9000Charger for charging AA and AAA cells both Nicads and NIMH,I got it to charge my NIMH AA battery's for my Coolpix L820.

It has a ton of really cool features that are not gimmicks,it can charge,cycle,discharge,your batterys and do other stuff as well.

I found the Cycling feature to be the most useful,I have been into radio control cars for 20 plus years using Sub-C Battery Packs and if there is one thing to be learned that is that just because a the Battery's in the pack may say they are 3000Mah it does not mean they are matched and some have more or less Mah from one cell to another,I have seen RC packs with a much as a 400Mah difference between cell's.

What I did was test 20 Brand New 2300Mah Energizer AA Battery's just to see how close they really were to the 2300Mah claim,what I was discharge them and then took the 4 Battery's out let them rest for 2 hours and the charged them back up and noted the Mah that went back into each cell as this charger tells you that,it should also be noted that the charger dis-charges each cells down to a voltage of .90 volts and that about where an RC Charger or discharge tray drains each cell to.What I found was that 8 of the cells took 2354Mah or somewhere very close to that to charge back up and another 8 where around 2230 to 2500Mah and the other 4 were anywhere from 2000 to 2150Mah,only 1 AA was 2000Mah,what that means for someone like me with a Nikon L820 that really sucks the power out of each cell is that I can match the cells and keep the strongest ones together,why is that important because a battery pack is only as strong as it's weakest cell.

When I say a battery pack is only as strong as its weakest cell its like this,I took the 3 weakest of the AA cells meaning the ones that took the least amount of Mah to fully charge back up and the only one that took 2026Mah and I started taking Pictures until the batterys were dead then I took the 4 weakest 2300Mah cells and took Pictures until they were dead and I got 30 more Pictures with the 4 weakest 2300Ma AA's.

Another great feature is how the Cycling feature can bring back cells by cycling them 2 to 3 times,I know that with AA and AAA battery's if they are not dis-charged at a fast constant rate they can become lazy and perform like crap,I have seen this with my own re-chargables that I use in my Mouse and after a few charges they are not the same but if you cycle them a few times they are as good as new.You can set this charger to do 12 charge cycles but if you don't see anymore improvement in the Mah going back into them after 1 to 3 Cycles then they are not going to get any better and either shot or close to it.

Another great feature about this charger is that each slot charges independently of each other,that means you can charge a 850Mah AAA cell at the same time a 900Mah AAA cell while charging a 2300Mah AA Cell and a 2000Mah AA cell.
To put it another way you can charge and discharge in any configuration you want at the same time it does matter.

The charge rate's for this charger are 200Mah to 2000Mah and yes you can charge 4 battery's at 2000Mah Per-Slot at the same time if you want to but I would not recommend it,I only charge at 800Mah to 900Mah Per-Slot Max.
The Discharge rate is 100Mah to 1000Mah I use 300Mah to 400Mah for AAA and 700 to 800Mah for AACells.

Maha also say's they use a low heat generating Algorithm(I forget where I read it.)and I would have it does seem to charge all my battery's much cooler then my Energizer charger does when using the same charge rates.
I know my Energizer charger always get my Energizer 2500Mah AA's a lot hotter at the half way point using my Energizer charger then my Maha does throw out the whole charge cycle and they are barely warm.

If you look at the ebay ad you will see all the different AA and AAA cells they have tested and the Ultrafire 3500Mah AA's only take a charge of 367Mah with this charger.

I do not sell these charge's and do not work for them I'm just writing a review.
MH-C9000 - Maha Energy

Canada Powerex MH C9000 Battery Charger Analyzer Tester Nimh Nicd AA AAA Maha | eBay

Amazon.com: PowerEx MH-C9000 WizardOne Charger-Analyzer for 4 AA/AAA Batteries: Home & Kitchen

 

[nickt]

I have this charger. I really like. It is somewhat large, but I like that. Easy to read the display without my reading glasses and plenty of room to grab a finished battery out of the middle and replace it if needed. It defaults to 1000ma and I'm good with just putting my AA eneloops in there with no thought or or button pushing. I set it down to 600 or 700ma for my AAA. These are original early enenloops and they refuse to die.

I had a Lacrosse BC-909. I always had trouble with the buttons and had to take it apart every few months. Eventually, something on the circuit board smoked and I got the MH-C9000.

 

[WayneF]

What I did was test 20 Brand New 2300Mah Energizer AA Battery's just to see how close they really were to the 2300Mah claim,what I was discharge them and then took the 4 Battery's out let them rest for 2 hours and the charged them back up and noted the Mah that went back into each cell as this charger tells you that,it should also be noted that the charger dis-charges each cells down to a voltage of .90 volts and that about where an RC Charger or discharge tray drains each cell to.What I found was that 8 of the cells took 2354Mah or somewhere very close to that to charge back up and another 8 where around 2230 to 2500Mah and the other 4 were anywhere from 2000 to 2150Mah,only 1 AA was 2000Mah,what that means for someone like me with a Nikon L820 that really sucks the power out of each cell is that I can match the cells and keep the strongest ones together,why is that important because a battery pack is only as strong as it's weakest cell.

I use a Maha C9000 charger too, it's great. But we cannot compare batteries by how much charge goes into them (it is not an efficient process, more always goes in then can come out). We can charge them forever, but we can only discharge them for so long.

You should be testing/comparing cells using the chargers Discharge cycle, actually measuring battery capacity, the capacity that the cell can hold and deliver during discharge. Capacity possibly might be restored and improve somewhat after repeating once. In fact, the charger also offers the Initialize cycle (takes a couple of days) which should restore old cells too.

 

[wade7575]

I measured how many Mah went back into the cells from being discharged witch is measuring the capacity.

 

[WayneF]

I measured how many Mah went back into the cells from being discharged witch is measuring the capacity.

Sorry, charging is Not determining capacity. Use it as you please, but capacity is the power it can deliver at discharge, to actually power something. The replacement mah charging is always a little more than it can deliver in use. Capacity is how much it can deliver to a load.

From C-9000 manual

Charge Mode
· Recharges the battery at the selected rate.
· Useful when battery needs to be recharged without determining the capacity of the battery. It should be used on batteries known to be in good condition and have been in continuous use.
· Requires the least amount of time.

Refresh & Analyze Mode
· First recharges the battery, rest for two hours, discharges, rest, then recharges again. Charging and discharging rates are programmable.
· Reports the discharge capacity at the end of the cycle.
· Useful when the battery capacity needs to be determined. Also useful for battery with degraded performance.
· Recommended once every ten cycles for NiMH batteries.

Break-In Mode (IEC capacity analysis)
· Applies a 16-hour 0.1C charge (0.1 times the capacity of the battery), rest of one hour, followed by a 0.2C discharge, rest again, and finally a 16-hour 0.1C recharge again.
· Recommended for brand-new batteries. This process is also known as “Forming Charge.” Also recommended with batteries that cannot be rescued by the Refresh & Analyze mode.
· Recommended once every 30 cycles for NiMH batteries.
· Requires 39 to 45 hours to complete.
· The process follows the IEC standard for determining battery capacity.

Discharge Mode
· Discharges the battery at the selected rate.
· Useful for analyzing the amount of charge stored in the battery. Battery not recharged at the end of the cycle.

Cycle Mode
· Performs a charge-discharge cycle for a programmable number of times. Charging and discharging rates are also selectable. At the end of the cycle, a final recharge is applied.
· Suitable for cycling the batteries multiple times.



Manual also says on last page:

Note the charging capacity is usually higher than the actual capacity of the battery owing to some energy lost as heat. Charging capacity cannot be used to judge the performance the battery. Instead, it can only be used to determine the progress of the charger. It is normal for this number to exceed the actual capacity by as much as 20-30%.


Note two things:

1. Capacity depends on the discharge rate. A low discharge rate will show higher capacity, and higher discharge rate will show lower capacity. Just how it is.

2. Note Break-In mode mentions IEC standards (charge and discharge), which is discharge at 0.2C rate, which is the standard for published capacities. 0.2C is not remotely like flash use however. But if you want to verify the 2300 mah rating of your Energizers, this is the procedure you have to use (to be comparable).

 

[wade7575]

That's the way I did it discharged them slowly and put it back in slowly,I just used the cycle feature to discharge them as I did not want to wait the 2 hours with battery's in the slots when I could be discharging more while I was letting the others take a break.