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Is it just me or have rechargeable NiMH improved?

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james_s:

--- Quote from: edy on November 15, 2022, 02:15:23 pm ---I’m looking at something that will do slow charging, I don’t care about speed as I have enough batteries to swap. I just want to make sure it doesn’t kill the batteries. These Duracells mention absolutely nothing about whether they are LSD or similar to eneloops, maybe they make them or maybe they just rebadge them from another supplier and not allowed to use certain trademarked terms? They are obviously low self discharge as they come pre-charged and so far have far outlasted anything I’ve ever used before. I fully expect to need to spend a good 16 hours charging them slowest safest method possible like it says on the package (250mA for 16h). But the Panasonic eneloop charger which comes with 4 AAA at 6h charge time doesn’t tell me anything about how many mA it uses to charge.

--- End quote ---

Why? I've been using a Lacrosse BC-700 for more than a decade, I usually charge at 500mA but sometimes I'm lazy and just use the default 250. I have never had a LSD cell fail, unless you count the one that was damaged by a short circuit in a flashlight. Eneloop, Amazon Basics, Fujitsu, all of them are still testing at least at rated capacity, even the ones i bought over 10 years ago. You can easily tell if your cells are LSD, they will come pre-charged and ready to use out of the package. Don't overthink it.

Twoflower:
I've also use the BC700 for many years. But I noticed that the lowest charge-current can indeed cause some problems with Eneloops. I noticed that some cells get hotter than others of the same batch and the charge of the cells differ a lot. Both problems vanished by using higher charging currents.

My working theory is that the -deltaV detection fails to detect the slow drop of the cell voltage if charged with low current. With higher charge-currents the cell voltage drops faster and the circuit can detect the end of the charging more reliable. I never measured that so I'm not sure if that is the real explanation. The result of the higher current is as mentioned the cells don't get as hot at the end of the charge and all cells show only a minimal difference of the charge-capacity.

alm:
I remember reading somewhere that the -dV detection might be less reliable under 0.3-0.4C, or for a 2500 mAh battery under 750 mA. I've always tried to stay above that value. I use an old Maha MH-C9000 charger that defaults to charging at 1000 mA.

IanB:
The Panasonic BQ-CC17 is a good charger. I have one and have had no problems with it. It charges the batteries slowly (which is good), and has four individual charging channels. I have various other chargers, but the Panasonic is my set it and forget it option when I just want to charge some batteries.

rdl:
I had a Maha/Powerex C808 that I used for years. One day something went pop and it quit working. I was too lazy to fix it and after very little research ordered a Nitecore D4. I also needed more AA cells and found the Fujitsu charger with batteries for little more than the cost of the batteries alone. Last year when I needed some AAA cells the Eneloop AAA cells were on sale with the charger pretty cheap. That's how I ended up with three chargers. So far all the batteries and chargers have been working fine.

EBL seems to be a decent brand, but the only experience I have with them is their 9 volt rechargeables. I have a couple of the little oval shaped dual battery chargers that I've been using for years with both NiMH and Li-Ion batteries. I prefer the Li-Ion because the capacity is close to a normal 9 volt alkaline battery.

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