What battery tester should i get?

RCRVRP

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Oct 20, 2019
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I would like to test state of charge on AAA, AA, and maybe 18650 batteries. I have a cheap tester that has a little needle that has a red zone, yellow and green but I it does not seem to be accurate. A battery can be in green but still doesnt seem to be fully charged when I put it in a light. I do have a multimeter I could use but its always at the shop when I need to check something at home.
One that also load tests would be nice but I prefer not to spend too much.
Any suggestions for me?
 
I would like to test state of charge on AAA, AA, and maybe 18650 batteries. I have a cheap tester that has a little needle that has a red zone, yellow and green but I it does not seem to be accurate. A battery can be in green but still doesnt seem to be fully charged when I put it in a light. I do have a multimeter I could use but its always at the shop when I need to check something at home.
One that also load tests would be nice but I prefer not to spend too much.
Any suggestions for me?
A basic, good qualtiy multimeter / DMM w/ basic testing of 1.5 & 9V cells under a light load w/ very accurate voltage measurements is a good starting point, and will serve in many other uses as well. These provides a special range for 1.5 and 9V cells, and measures output voltage under light load. This will help eliminate those zombie cells which still show decent output with no-load, but which can't maintain that output under any real load. You can also accurately measure open-circuit / no-load voltage of Li-ion cells, along with world of other things.

Extech is what I recommend for best quality / performance at low price point. Today there are many trashy multimeter options from third world companies for pennies. I recommend Extech as a good U.S. test eq. manufacturer with a long and good track record. They are now part of FLIR. This is what I use at home (an older model much like this), and have also used other Extech products in my professional work.

Price wise, you could start here (for an orderable distributor listing link):

Their DMM line goes up from there in cost / features, with other low cost models with additional features, such as auto-ranging (which I don't personally prefer to use much, but others do), capacitance, frequency, etc. Here's the current DMM lineup, which start at the MN35 and MN36:

 
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