AA Battery charger w/ four batteries: $5 after MIR (add S/H)

[jonnyGURU]

Just saw this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...Details.asp?EdpNo=1168672&sku=ULT31792

The big difference between this and the $15 Energizer AA charger is these batteries are 2500mAh and the Energizers that are bundled with their charger are only 1700mAh!

 

[Navid]

Shipping is $6.99 for me. That makes it not too hot for me at least!
It helps others if you add +S&H to the title.

 

[jm0ris0n]

Where is this Energizer AA charger you speak of ?

BTW: Anyone know how good this charger is ?

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: jm0ris0n
Where is this Energizer AA charger you speak of ?

BTW: Anyone know how good this charger is ?

Buy.com has the Energizer with the 1700mAh's for $15.99.

I've got some of the Ultra batteries (although not the charger.) They actually last pretty long in my camera.

I don't imagine the chargers are too different. They're essentially just 110V to 1.5V AC to DC linear power supplies, right?

 

[Inspector Jihad]

? it shows up as 20 - 10 for me...

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
? it shows up as 20 - 10 for me...

Me too! Must've been a typo and they just figured it out or something.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Hmm... I need to read. Check out the front page. It's the "deal of the hour."

EDIT: This is kind of fun actually... I'm refreshing the page to see what pops up next.

 

[mikeford]

Chargers vary in performance all over the place, and I will never use another cheap charger again. The best chargers like Maha use a pulse charging technology that conditions the battery, and control the rate by the dv/dt.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: mikeford
Chargers vary in performance all over the place, and I will never use another cheap charger again. The best chargers like Maha use a pulse charging technology that conditions the battery, and control the rate by the dv/dt.

I've had cheap chargers from everyone from Energizer to Olympus. I've never had a problem. I've even had old batteries that I got for free from Value America 6 years ago last 5 years. I think even if I get 2 years out of a set of rechargables I've gotten my money's worth.

EDIT:

Thwart...

From http://www.dansdata.com/danletters155.htm

It's not new, and it's not particularly useful, either.

In The Beginning, people made variable-rate chargers for NiCds (NiMH cells didn't exist yet) that only had one actual current setting, but varied their duty cycle - so if you asked for 2.5A from a charger with a 5A maximum rate, for instance, it'd just pulse its output so that half of the time it was delivering 5A and the other half of the time it was doing nothing. The pulse rate was, and is, often not terribly fast - a few times a second at most.

This technique makes chargers cheaper and works just fine (though, contrary to some manufacturers' claims, it's not actually notably better than charging at a steady rate equal to the average output of the pulsed charge), but some people got it into their heads that you could charge faster, or prolong the useful life of the batteries, or get more starting punch out of your R/C car, or whatever, by actually discharging the battery in pulses in between the charge pulses. That's reverse pulse, or "burp" charging, and it's basically just voodoo. It does no harm, but it also does no good, as far as I know.