Something to consider if you have both Li-ion & Ni-MH cells...
I bought a dedicated Ni-MH charger - La Crosse Technology BC-700 (Amzn). But I don't use it since I got a ThruNite MCC-4.
ThruNite MCC-4 is a 4 bay charger. It can do Li-ion & NiMH at same time (HKJ review) (purchase: iLLs, OGS, *Amzn).
But it doesn't "refresh" or discharge cells like the La Crosse charger.
I have a Maha C9000 at home and I really like that charger for my MiMh batteries. However, I have been away from home for over a year and have bought a charger that I really like and seems to work fine for all the batteries I have been charging. It’s an Intelicharger i4. You can pick them up for about $20 and charge both NiMh and LiOn at the same time.
2 day ship from amazon is my primary reason. Granted they are 2/3 gen at amazon, but the cost of 4th gen isn’t really justified by the benefits imo.
Batteries: Eneloops or white top Duracell “Staycharged” batteries (aka Duraloops).
Eneloops hold their charge the longest, maintain capacity the longest, and offer the most bang-for-the-buck. The superiority of Eneloops and re-wrapped Eneloops (like Duraloops) may not be immediately apparent, but there’s a pretty big difference 2-3 years down the line. I have 5 year old Eneloops that are still as good as new. I can’t say that about any other LSD Nimhs that I’ve had.
Charger: La-Crosse BC-700 - price on Amazon fluctuates between $28-38.
I used to think that a basic $10 smart charger was all I needed because I wasn’t a “heavy” user. I bought the BC-700 a little over a year ago and I don’t think I could go back to a budget nimh charger. Being able to check the capacity of each battery individually is huge.
I have some devices that take 4 nimhs. For the less important ones, I run old black top Duracells in them. What I didn’t realize was that a few of my black top Duracells were going bad and losing capacity. I could tell that my runtimes were diminishing, but I couldn’t tell why because my old charger couldn’t test capacity. The BC-700 allowed me to test the capacity of each cell and I was able to pick out the bad cells and match the remaining cells with ones that had similar capacity. Now I get more reliable performance out of my multi-cell devices.
Just to echo a few of the above sentiments…. Eneloop and bc700 charger.
If you are mainly going to use AA and AAA, this is the way to go
Just 2 days ago, my mate gave me 3 old GP AAA batteries to test because his charger ( maha I think) said at least 1 of them was dead and could not be charged…
They are rated 600mah min. Ran test cycle, when complete 1 battery 132mah, second battery 232 mah and last one 290mah. Then ran the refresh cycle, batteries are now 258mah,309mah and 458mah….
Not only could the charger check each battery individually, but could also revive the batteries somewhat…
Awesome stuff!
Obviously, if you are going to use li ion mainly, the I4 or Thrunite might be a better option…
And also, eneloops from ChibiM are the way to go!
Good luck with whatever you decide. 
I dont trust my i4 after it overcharged my AAA’s.
I will side with ChibiM, he seems to be selling hard to get worldwide Eneloops such as 3rd gen XX aka Pro and colorful ones, I for one havent seen them in my local stores ever, especially for that price.
Regarding cheap chargers - there are plenty of reliable cheap chargers which are good for the money, heres the cheapest one Ive seen with four individual channels, not a dumb charger, albeit pretty slow:
4.56$ on Ebay right now:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271214964724
But as others have mentioned - if you want to get serious with your batteries and their maintenance, then get yourself MAHA C9000, if youre in USA theres hardly any reason not to, given how often it goes on sale for less than 40$(???) ;)!
Heres some more about budget and not that budget chargers, I started that thread and it helped me alot and some folks shared their experience with smart chargers:
and that’s the enelong and short of it.
i’m glad someone agrees with me 
some people can get very defensive about their choices
concerning the i2/i4, if i remember correctly its not a correct dv charging algorithm, but an approximation
I use Eneloop, GP Recyko, Top Craft Ready To Use (Aldi) and Tronic “ECO” (Lidl).
All of these low selfdischarge batteries are very good, the Tronic batteries have the highest capacity (2200mAh, tested in the Maha MH-C9000).
Even the oldest Top Craft batteries (4 years) still work very good in the camera flash.
The Top Craft and Tronic are the cheapest, 4,99 Euro for 4 x AA (in Belgium, they could even be cheaper in Germany because we have the “Bebat-tax” here).
In Veers thread there is a small unnoticed response that should be pointed out ....
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/7551#comment-178168
this charger comes with 4 rechargable batteries too..
I've had these come with duraloops but most of them are black top
but figure that into the price since even 4 regular rechargables are worth at least 6$
the reason this charger is cheap is because it comes with a austrailian type plug ...to wit you can either buy a $1.50 el cheapo adapter ... feed it 12volts into the side with a easy as hell to find wallwart with a 3mm plug ...or give it 12V off of a cigarette lighter plug ...
Or all of the above .
I bought a few at 13$ and have run them for years .
If you try to buy the us version of the same thing you'll find it being sold from 45 to 60$
It was a 10$ deal about 3 years ago on schloop and they were almost all duraloops back then ...and people still cried about the wrong plug ..
I say get over it ."there's no crying in electronics ".. great charger w/ USB outlet on the side ..
great deal at $10 /12.99/or 16$
then I'd talk to ChibiM or find some duraloops
vs
the U.S. model
I’m having good luck with tenergy 2600 and nitecore i4 charger
I have good luck with these. http://www.amazon.com/Imedion-2400mAh-Rechargeable-Batteries-4-Pack/dp/B003LWMZ5M/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1390000076&sr=1-3&keywords=maha+batteries
The Eneloops are also good.
I would like a link to where a 20 dollar purchase can be made/reliable seller …
Picked one off amazon for $17. They were down to $15 a month or so ago.
Just chiming in with another vote for Eneloop / Duraloop cells. (Duraloops being the Duracell branded pre-charged cells with white tops marked Made in Japan… and clearly made by Sanyo ;-)). I’ve gotten good mileage out of both.
as for chargers, make sure you get one with Independent channels—-so each battery gets charged to full capacity. some cheap chargers require a pair of batteries which means it shuts off when the “fuller” battery is done. I have a lacrosse bc700. also make sure it has a low rate option since a slow charger is better for the battery’s health. as far as brands, most people
and tests show the eneloops to be superior. I have some but also have some Duracell and rayovac a that have been predictable and good. just make sure anything you get is LSD/ pre charged or you’ll be disappointed—-this is one reason I believe many non-flashaholics & non-battery-holics still think rechargeables are horrible because of non lsd’s and nicads from years ago. I just recently convinced my dad to quit alkalines and get LSD nimh. the rayovacs I use in remotes and eneloops I use in more higher drain items like lights.
If you don’t live somewhere you can get Ene/loops or other LSDs for a good price, Turningy LSDs from HobbyKing are a decent bet. Sadly AA are out of stock at the moment (and I wanted to order them). In fact they seem to go our of stock resonably often, I don’t really understand how their inventory management can be so poor, but anyway….
Also because they incorrectly list them as lithium batteries, you’ll need to put if with their Fiji Post service so don’t expect quickly delivery. And because of their shipping costs for low weight, it may not be worth it if you only want a few (but it depends on what you have available and where you live).
But to give some examples I calculated for myself, including shipping to NZ:
USD 1.40 for 39 AAA
USD 1.43 for 26 AAA
USD 1.49 for 15 AAA
USD 2.30 for 42 AA
USD 2.35 for 21 AA
USD 2.41 for 14 AA
I know some people have managed to get AA /loops at USD2.00 or less but many of these are special local stores in US etc. When you can ship to NZ, once you add that it usually ends up about 50% more (e.g. ChibiM*) which I’m not convinced is worth it (particularly for toys and other relatively less demanding items). It’s even worse for AAA.
Turnigy LSDs tend to hold capacity fairly well (as do most real LSDs) and in fact because they generally started off at a higher capacity can still be higher capacity than some Eneloops after 6 months - 1 year. Main flaw is they do sag more under load than Eneloop, perhaps 0.05V or more sag depending on current draw. So if you have a voltage sensitive device you may or may not get lower capacity out of them. Also I’ve never seen much testing on their cycle life and abuse tolerance. Still they are one of the only LSDs shipped from Hong Kong/China I would trust. I know some people have had good experiences with some of the other Chinese cells like Soshine etc but I’m just not sure you can trust them to consistently deliver a decent product.
*But don’t get me wrong, it’s great to finally have a reliable and cheap seller of genuine Eneloop that we have with ChibiM threads here. There’s also nkon.nl who may be cheaper although you’ll only get 3rd gen.
My Turnigy AA’s voltage sags rather quickly when used in digicam, whereas Eneloops keep on ticking until they are fairly empty ;)!
Yes the best reviews for voltage I’ve seen are 1.2V AA 2400 mAh NiMH Turnigy LSD Battery Tests - RightBattery.com and 1.2V AAA 900 mAh Turnigy LSD NiMH Battery Tests - RightBattery.com
You can compare to their 3rd gen Eneloop reviews here 1.2V AA 2000 mAh Sanyo Eneloop NiMH Battery Tests - RightBattery.com and 1.2V AAA 800 mAh Sanyo Eneloop NiMH Battery Tests - RightBattery.com
You can see the Turnigy voltage is a fair amount lower, particularly at 2A discharge. But if your device isn’t voltage sensitive it may still give higher capacity. (These aren’t long term tests, but considering the difference in capacity and the results I’ve seen from LSD, it’s like it will remain for a few months at least.) Maybe even at 2A, their cut off was 1V and the curve still seemed fairly flat. so if your device can tolerate that low without issue, it may work fine for longer (but we’ve no evidence either way).
Also they gave no indication of testing more than one. And a sample size of one while sadly common for internet reviews even semi professional and somewhat simple ones like this, is actually fairly useless if you want any degree of confidence in the results. I think some others have found better voltages/less sag particularly at 2A so this may be at the lower end of the normal range.
But I don’t think anyone will suggest Turnigy will give better voltages compared to Eneloops so definitely in a voltage sensitive device you probably should consider Eneloops even at 50% more.