I find the traslucent Shan about as sexy as a battery charger can get, the next step would be the Technoline/Lacrosse/other brands clones. I have a technoline BC700 charger/analyzer that can be found for about 25$, with similar functions, and in my hands is an excellent charger. It may be not as fashion as you need, or not new enough, but you can always place it in a drawer. Normally, on battery chargers, good models stick around for years with minor design changes. In any case, if you need simple and pretty you might consider the Apple charger. It is an extremely simple thing and quite sexy, and it does not perform bad at all. Only charges 2 batteries at a time and no advanced options like the more functional models that we recommended, for 30$ (with six Appleloops included).
I’ll never understand this obsession with stylish appearances, its a charger, as long as its not hideous or covered in gargoyles who cares.
Well, if you are willing to spend then you can consider the 35-40$ Maha powerex MH-C9000, with a very nice display and for many a gold standard of NiHM chargers. And if you are in for the ferrari, have a look at this cool skyRC (about 60:money_mouth_face: with a supercool phone app to monitor the charge by bluetooth where you can almost see the electrons pumping into the battery :bigsmile:
Above you said that you decided for a nitecore D4, that is a good charger for Li-ion that can charge HIHM but not a dedicated NIHM.
If I were to buy a charger that only needed to charge AA and AAAs, I would probably go for the Voltcraft/Lacrosse, as its just nice to have those extra options over a standard panasonic charger.
BTW
Most Panasonic chargers in Japan are smart chargers!
This is a copy from the eneloop 2005-2014 info thread:
(these chargers are currently on the market)
| BQ-CC11 | BQ-CC21 | BG-CC22 | BQ-CC23 | BQ-CC24 | BQ-CC25 | |
| Battery fitment | 4 cells | 4 cells | 4 cells | 2 cells | 2 cells | 4+2*1 |
| AAA | 1-4 | 1-4 | 1-4 | 1-2 | 1-2 | 1-4 |
| AA | 1-4 | 1-4 | 1-4 | 1-2 | 1-2 | 1-4 |
| C | - | - | - | - | - | 1-4 |
| D | - | - | - | - | - | 1-4 |
| 9V*1 | - | - | - | - | - | 1-2 |
| Smart charge | Smart | Smart | Smart | Smart | -(timer) | - |
| Charge time | ||||||
| Fast charge*2 1-2 AA | 2 hours | 2 hours | 4 hours | 4 hours | *3 | 6 hours |
| normal charge | 4 hours | 4 hours | 8 hours | 8 hours | 7 hours | 6 hours |
| Zero Power consumption *4 | yes | - | - | - | - | - |
| Voltage | 100-240 | 100-240 | 100-240 | 100-240 | 100-240 | 100-240 |
*1 BQ-C25 is a multi battery charger, and can charge 9V batteries, 2 in total.
*2 Fast charging can only be done with 2 cells. and not with 4 at the same time.
*3 the BQ-CC24 is a timer based charger especially for eneloop Lite, therefore its not recommended to use with standard eneloops.
*4 zero power consumption is that the charger will use less than 0.005 watt when not in use, according to IEC62301 it qualifies for Zero Power Consumption.
I have the lacrosse bc-700. it’s about $40 but price fluctuates and mine is a little over 5yrs old without any problems. otherwise my advice is find one with independent channels and the lowest rate you can find. you could even try the tenergy tn-153 for about $6 shipped unless other users had a bad experience
My Bc700 is two years old and the power supply went but was replaced under warranty (its not made by lacrosse so its not their fault). The charger has also done fine, and i bet i have recharged 500 times or more since i got it (camera, GPS, flashlight, and so on)
After having just had a look at the reviews on Amazon for the La Crosse chargers it seems the La Crosse company has atrocious customer service. Also the price is too high for their chargers for their quality level.
It was about to be the Nitecore D4 but if our patience can hold out for just a while longer it seems there may be a new charger released soon by one of the main-line companies. If the D4 had a provision for 4.35v then maybe. It might still win anyway. We shall keep you posted. 
BQ-CC17 is suppose to be smart / delta-V termination.
ChibiM - the link for the BLF eneloop info leads to a page not found.
Halo - I see on the product page it says for the 17:
"Charging control TΔ /Timer" as well as "...individual management - delta V control."
Is not the "TΔ" referring to the time function? Is the "delta V control" only for discerning the fact of different batteries in different slots?
The Flashlight Wiki page says the BQ CC17 cannot measure cell capacity.
On this Amazon review page the first post on the page from "Usability" just in the paragraphs after the
*** UPDATE (22nd June 2014) ***
toward the bottom of the post says that the BQ-CC17 could not charge a couple of older batteries he had since it did not seem to detect their presence but the La Crosse BC-700 had no problem charging them.This would seem to be a function of whether a charger is smart or not.
A charger must have two features in order to be called "Smart" as far as I can tell. One is that it must sense the battery type and make some decisions on its own. The second is the charger must intelligently determine the proper charge termination time by other than a timer.
I am all ready to be corrected if anyone can contribute to my early education about these things
It seems we need an authoritative definition of a "smart charger" upon which we can agree.
Additional research has found another gem. Has anyone heard of the Panasonic BQ-CC15? Just look at this:
It charges AAA, AA, C, D & 9 volt and it can take 4 Ds at a time! More technical information is on this ebay page.
It may be a little larger than most but size is not important for us. Have a look at the tech specs on the ebay page and see if the charging current is agreeable for you all.
I believe the T delta(I’m on simple editor because I don’t know how to post links in advanced and can’t understand that anchor thing 
)is temperature change.As full charge is reached,the cell temp increases and detecting this is one method.Panasonic gives the charge control as;
- BQ18:timer cut - dumb
- BQ17:Tdelta/timer - semi smart
- BQ16:smart charge 1/-deltaV/timer - smart, they call it peak cut control.
BTW does anyone know if a Ni-MH equivalent of the TP4056 charging board exists?
Billy X - Thank you. So which is the best way to terminate a NiMH battery in a charger ideally? I have been reading too many things lately and must have need for a refresher course!
Smart just means it actually detects when the battery is full instead of just charging on a timer only. Its harder the detect full charge with ni-mh than li-ion. Sometimes the charger can actually miss the change in the battery that indicates full charge (delta V) in which case the charger would use temperature (if it has a sensor) or just a dumb timer as the charge termination backup. Extra features would be measuring capacity and a refresh function.
DeltaV (aka ΔV) is the usual smart full charge detection / termination of charge.
As Billy X said TΔ is temperature delta. A temperature based smart method of full charge detection / termination of charge.
The BQ CC17 table listing "Charging control: TΔ /Timer" looks like an error to me. Should have also included ΔV since the description says it uses deltaV.
BQ CC16 is also smart but faster.
It has no display to show capacity. Measuring capacity is not needed for full charge detection / termination of charge.
Its not ideal that it refused to charge them but he did say they were old enough to be from pre-eneloop days. Old, worn batteries will look different to a charger. Some do refuse to charge them. It may be that the charger can no longer be sure they are ni-mh, impedance too high.
Do you mean cheap but good like the original TP4056? Nothing cheap since all the smart ΔV ni-mh charger chips are a few times more expensive than li-ion chips. They may never get to be as cheap since ΔV just seems harder to do.
_Having looked at HKJ’s this Enova charger has the temp bump at charge termination on the Eneloop graphs and is rated good for Ni-MH.this Enova charger does not have the temp bump and is rated as not fully charging the cells.
You have to scroll down just past the thermal imaging pictures.
Merry Christmas 
Smart charger was first used on NiCd chargers for all chargers that did not use timed charge, i.e. detected battery charge state and terminated when the battery was full, instead of just charging for a fixed time period.
Looking at the specifications for BQ-CC17 it looks like it barely fit the "smart charger" description: it has fixed time charging and will stop early if it gets hot (TΔ /Timer) (Depending on implementation it can be a valid smart charger termination).
The BQ-CC16 looks much better: Smart Charge1/-ΔV /Timer. I do also have a review of it, but I do not know when I will publish it.
The BQ CC17 description says it uses deltaV. The lack of ΔV on the spec table could be an error, no?
TΔ as a backup in case deltaV is missed.
HKJ - Thank you for your input. I did try to find any reviews of yours for any of the Panasonic/eneloop chargers but found none. Please publish your review as soon as it is convenient for you.
How about that BQ-CC15 I had found? The tech sheet does have the various charge currents specified.
I did this as a "backup" review to use if I do not have any other charger review ready. At the current time I do have a few chargers in queue and also reviews ready for some of them.
I could not find much info about it, but it may use a timed charge for 9V batteries (16 hours charge time sounds suspicious).
Well I found a page with multiple Sanyo Chargers but it may be dated as it seems Panasonic is making too much money to care about details in their marketing efforts these days. This is also from their Singapore regional office intended for South Asia distribution so models may have a different model number elsewhere. This is posted for the convenience of those who may wish to peruse the selections from Sanyo/Panasonic: http://panasonic.net/energy/eneloop/sg/?p=battery-chargers
I probably got ruined looking at all the various chargers since now I want a SkyRC MC3000 found in their catalog but not on their regular charger page. Their new 2015 pdf catalog can be gotten from here: http://www.skyrc.com/download/catalog.pdf
More news as it comes in!
Me too! Interesting thread on the other side about the SkyRC MC3000. I think a Spring launch was suggested (hope they mean Spring in the Northern hemisphere). 