Help a Newbie

I just purchased 8 new aa eneloop's. Now I need a charger. Which one should I get. $30 limit. I almost got the energizer 15 min. charger but held off to get some advice. Please help me out as I need it fairly soon.

Hi,

I got the energizer 15 minute charger and it works nice. It's fast too
of course. There is also a modification you can do to make it 30 minutes
if you want to, which is also kinda cool.

Stay the heck away from the 15 minute chargers....while they do work, they are very hard on the cells. You definitely will not get anywhere near a 1000 cycles out of them using the 'nuclear' chargers.

The Energizer 15 minute charger (CH15MN) is one of the worst in terms of how hard it is on the cells but one of the best in terms of speed....hits them with a BLISTERING 7.5 AMPs. Heck, even the Energizer 30 minute charger (CH30MN) hits them with 4 Amps! Well over the maximum rate of 1C that many manufacturers are indicating.

It's a hair more than $30 but I would go with the LaCrosse BC-900 ($39).

http://www.thomas-distributing.com/la_crosse_bc-900_battery_charger.php

If you wanted to go top dollar, I would get a Maha MH-C9000 ($60).

http://www.thomasdistributing.com/maha-mh-c9000-battery-charger.php

There are many other smart chargers that perform well, but the two above are a couple of the BEST and most popular right now. They not only charge your batteries but can also discharge, condition, analyze, etc. them as well. These features really help out when you start getting into using rechargeables quite a bit and want to sort out the under performing cells.

I am going to go with the LaCrosse. I have read about it on the boards and thought it would be more than I needed, but on second thought it is just what I need as I get more and more torches.

Make sure you get the BC900 model versus the BC700 model. They have the exact same overall capabilities, except with the BC900 you get a couple of the higher charge rates which will come in handy with some of the older and higher capacity AA cells.

I have 2 of them and love them both. Make sure it has the v33 firmware too. When it powers on you see it displayed for a moment in the display on the right hand side.

I also have the MH-C9000 and like it for different reasons....mostly because of the Break-In mode and the fact it spaces the batteries out a bit more.

Whatever you do, DO NOT get the 15 minute charger!! I have one from about a year ago and the 4 2400 mAh cells which came with them started fading after 2 months. I think I got about 20 cycles through them when they died on me.

Hello again,

Many cells die because they are bad cells, and some of the Energizer
cells are known to be defective.
I've been using the Energizer 15 minute charger for quite some time now
and the only cells that died were the ones that were known to be defective.

I've used mostly Duracell cells and Energizer cells and some other
brands on the 30 minute setting (requires internal modification).