Charging time

Hey, I just used my charger for the first time. Its a Sanyo that came as a kit with a bunch of eneloop batts. The instructions say that it takes about SIX hours to fully charge. You have to charge them in pairs, either two at a time or four. The charger stopped flashing after about three hours indicating a full charge. Is the charger smart enough to know when to shut off? And if its doing two or more batts is it able to tell how much charging each one needs? :thinking:

Any charger that charges cells only in pairs, is not dedicating a charging channel to each cell. So if those 2 cells being put in the charger are not sitting with about the same state of charge one is bound to be over-charged while the other finishes off. A rather poor design that should be avoided, sorry

I believe most of the Sanyo "eneloop kit" chargers are technically "smart" chargers that will terminate the charge automatically when the cells are done, but some are better than others. The best chargers (Sanyo, or otherwise) are those that can charge any number of cells at once, and that have smart termination. (usually advertised as something like "negative delta V termination" or something to that effect).