I bought that very model from CCrane years ago when it was ~$15. I never even took it out of the box. I had no faith in it but I had bought many many things from them over the years and and I figured that for it's low price it would be entertaining to try to get it to work in an emergency (entertainment is much more important in an ongoing crisis than the uninitiated can imagine). I also bought it because I like CCrane and I felt that there was always the possibility that it may actually work.
Well, I wrung it out on the high ground in the aftermath of K in New Orleans.
It does work. I charged NiCDs and NiMH AAs with it
for a few weeks to augment my stash. Bear in mind that these are very much
hands on units. They are 'dumb chargers' so it's up to the user to know the capacity of the cells to be charged and to time the whole process for a good charge.
I think that that unit, with all of it's limitations, is well worth it's price. It actually has a clever design which is well thought out and durable. It may be kind of demanding for every day use but in emergencies it is acceptable to invest more attention to this kind of process. The important thing is that the unit works as advertized and it is cheap.
For all of those reasons this unit passes the 'opener' requirments imo for an 'emergency device'. In extremus it will serve it's owner far better than nothing, if that is important to anyone. When my power came back on after six weeks I boxed it up and put it back in our storm kit.
My brother bought about five of these from another vendor. I had two of them when the hurricane came through Ohio (Yes, it really did! Power was out 5 days). They don't seem like much to behold, but I have to say they do work, and quite well. They are, very slow.
I must say that because of it's slowness it occured to me that multiples of this unit could be useful. Way better than nothing.
