Review: Duracell 2650mAh AA NiMH

[Razor06]

Can anyone recommend a good charger for these? Thanks

[servaasproducts]

Maha make a couple of chargers which will meet your needs.
The two I would recommend would be http://servaas.com.au/maha-powerex-c...ries-p-34.html

or

http://servaas.com.au/maha-powerex-c...ptor-p-35.html
As these "smart" battery chargers measure the voltage of the batteries as they charge, they are both capable of fully charging the duracell 2650 cells.

Hope this helps

Kellie

[obsidian9]

How about the Sony BCG-34HE4 Super-Quick Worldwide Battery Charger[/b]? It's a great deal from amazon and seems to be a smart charger too. Is it smart enough to give a full charge to these 2650 mAh AA batteries, or their 1000 mAh AAA little brothers?

[Razor06]

servaasproducts wrote:

Maha make a couple of chargers which will meet your needs.
The two I would recommend would be http://servaas.com.au/maha-powerex-c...ries-p-34.html

or

http://servaas.com.au/maha-powerex-c...ptor-p-35.html
As these "smart" battery chargers measure the voltage of the batteries as they charge, they are both capable of fully charging the duracell 2650 cells.

Hope this helps

Kellie

Thanks Kellie. What about the Maha MH-C801D charger, is it basically the same as the 401 except 8 cells? Was just wondering if it was just as good. Thanks!

[SilverFoxCPF]

Hello Razor,

It is my humble opinion that the 801 is a lot better than the 401...

Tom

[servaasproducts]

Yes, as SilverfoxCPF says, the 801 is a better charger. It is a newer design, with newer charging/conditioning algorithms, plus it has an LCD screen to provide status of each battery.

I have the "older" version of the LaCrosse BC-900 & it's always worked like a champ. I think people should return faulty products (every company has them), instead of pontificating abut how bad they are.....it's a residual effect of the Internet.

[SilverFoxCPF]

Hello Kalypso,

Kalypso wrote:

I have the "older" version of the LaCrosse BC-900 & it's always worked like a champ. I think people should return faulty products (every company has them), instead of pontificating abut how bad they are.....it's a residual effect of the Internet.

I agree with you, but the BC-900 is worth a little "pontificating" in my opinion...

I also have one of the older versions and am very pleased with its performance. It seems to just about do it all, and came with a very attractive price.

Then the reports and picturesof melted chargers started coming in.

When designing a charger, there are several safety considerations that are incorporated into a design. The purpose of these is to protect the consumer in the event something goes wrong.

I have heard and observed several chargers that get the cells hot enough to melt the shrink wrap off of them, but they eventually shut down and the damage is confined to the cells. The charger remains intact. TheBC-900 is the only moderncharger thatI know of thathas actually melted the plastic shell of the charger. This plastic melts at around 200 F. This indicates that the cells were actually hotter than that because they are a little ways away from the plastic. Having an open 200+ F item around the house is not something I want my children to "play" with.

We initially thought that the cells were the problem. However, a lot of the melt downs occurred during a 200 mA charge and a battery should be able to withstand that low a charge current for a long time. This got us digging deeper and looking at the charger itself.

It seems that the BC-900 has a component that is "on the edge" of its published specifications as far as heat dissipation goes. This component can fail open or shorted. If it fails open, the charger just quits working. If it fails shorted, it goes toa full current charge and ignores any "signal" to terminate the charge. Pumping 1 Amp or more into a battery for an extended period of time can cause the melt down damage we have observed.

In this case, it seems that the charger mostly works fine. It could be that there was a batch of bad components, and the newer versions have a different batch of components. It also could be that my environmental conditions are different from those who have experienced melt downs. I do know that we received a wave of melt down reports with the version 32 charger, and now, with the version 33 charger, they seem to have gone away.

I still recommend the BC-900, but I add some recommendations. Keep it away from combustible items, keep pets and children away, and check the temperature of the cells from time to time.

Tom

[Lightingguy32]

For the Duracell 2650's, was their OEM China or Japan, because Duracell, like energizer has an OEM in Japan and an OEM in China, recently 3 or so of my Energizer 2500mAh batteries have splurted their electrolytes out of the positive terminal. I am just curious about duracell though, do both of the OEMs make good batteries?

[NuclearMind]

:blah: :P

visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_...ydride_battery you will see that:

Brand new batteries, or batteries which have been unused for some time, need "reforming" to reach their full capacity. For this reason new batteries may need several charge/discharge cycles before they operate to their advertised capacity.

In my cases, the Duracell 2650 mAh also got pretty low on their first charge cycle... the four batteries all got somewhere between 1400 mAh and 1800 mAh... On their third or fouth charge cycle, they all got between 2702 mAh and 2800 mAh ...

The "refresh mode" on the BC900 is precisely intended to do just that. to get the batteries to the point where they have reached their maximum capacity... So next time, use it instead of saying that your batteries are not good or that your charger is bad...

The BC900 is one of the best charger around, if you know how to use it !!