Hiya, I have been using a Nitecore D4 since I joined here, with no issues at all really other than it taking ages to charge 4 x of anything.
The new charger ideally need to charge 4 x 18650’s or 4 AA/AAA’s.
The nitecore works fine on 2 batteries, but when doing 4 it slows right down, oddly 4 x AA’s take stupidly long, more than time 18650’s!
Now, I don’t mind waiting for the 18650’s so much, as they are for me - the AA’s on the other hand are for the kids, and 4 seem to come down daily.
I have cheap fast charger that came with them, but it doesn’t seem to fully charge them, and seems to charge some more than others (capacity wise) - I tend to finish them in the Nitecore after.
So, I want a charger that will do both, with at least the option of me speeding things up (certainly for the AA’s) in all 4 slots, not just 2.
Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!Thank you
Thank you for your replies so far. The Xtar VP4 Plus Dragon looks like the daddy, but it’s a little expensive (for me at this time, later hopefully not)
Otherwise the Miboxer C4-12 looks ok.
Look into the Opus BT-3100/3400 v. 2.2, or the latter v. 3.1. You get 700mAh x 4 slots for NiMH and you get 1000mAh x 4 slots for Li-Ion, or 1500mA/2000mA x 2 slots for li-ion cells.
Also, look up at HKJ’s link and check out the Liitokala Lii Engineer 500 for 1A x 4 slot charging.
These are both analyzing chargers and require one to have an IQ slightly above the mean, but they work well, are pretty safe, are mostly multi-chemistry and under $40 shipped.
I’m really happy that I won the Miboxer C2-6000 in a giveaway. Now I want the C4-12!
Only for Li-ion batteries though, since I only use Eneloop AA’s. From what I understand they’re pretty sensitive to heat, so slow charging is recommended (I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong).
EDIT: I realised that you can set the charging current really low on Miboxer’s chargers, so I guess they can be used for any batteries
We really don’t want to set the charging rate too low for NiMH batteries, because some of the algorithms use temperature to terminate the charge. If we don’t get those batteries up to temperature, the charger keeps charging.
I think it’s PowerEx/Maha that cautions not to go below a .3C rate, so for a typical Eneloop, that would be ~700mA.
Many of use charge up at a 1000mA rate, for our standard/hi-cap Eneloop types.
Have quite a few chargers, single bay , dual bay up to 6 bay. Most recently the C4-12 added to the stable and i am very impressed with it. The auto select of the charge levels works good so far, be it 16340, 18650, 20700 and 26650(those are my most used in last week or so).
Also still going strong, the opus bt c3100 v2.2, nothing but praise as it has seen me right for over 2yrs of daily use. Still going strong and sat next to the c4-12.
I am still waiting to receive my C4-12. Currently using the LiitoKala Engineer Lii-500 manually set to 1A when charging my Eneloop/Ikea Laada AA batteries. Any idea if it is safe to charge these AA batteries at 2A?
Panasonic has a 2A ‘fast charge’ protocol for their standard and hi-cap Eneloops, so yes…you can charge them up at 2A, but it will most probably shorten their lifespans if done so on a regular basis.
Many smart chargers use dv/dt termination algorithm for nimh cells, and the reason you don’t want too low of a charge rate is because termination could be missed if the voltage rises too slowly as a result of a very low charge rate.
I’m no whiz at this stuff, but it’s delta voltage and temperature, right?
I was reading an article by a fellow, that HKJ posted in the Panasonic CC-75/65 testing over on CPF, IIRC.
He said that one does need to get the temperature up to a certain point, to trigger things. Charging at too low a rate can fail at raising the temp up to that trigger point.
