Buy the charger to save money
Written: Apr 26 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Informative charger that fairly well built.
Cons: Buttons are fragile. There is a learning curve.
The Bottom Line: Buy this charger to save money. Your 'toys' and your batteries will benefit too.
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| roostrfsh's Full Review: La Crosse Alpha Battery Charger and Recovery Syste... |
The LaCross BC-900 battery charger is the charger you need. It will charge NiCad and NiMH AA/AAA batteries. The charger with four independent charging bays will guarantee you get the best performance of your rechargeable batteries with 15 minutes of learning. It cost a bit more then other chargers but it saves a lot more. I'm very happy with it.
Have you ever wondered why your rechargeable batteries go dead before they should? Toys that should run one hour but only run 10 minutes? Or a set of batteries that should last a couple of years fail in eight months? One battery is always weaker then the others in multiple setups. With repeated total discharges the weaker battery is damaged. The technical term is called battery reversal. In your battery set, the weakest battery is the total power of all the batteries. 30% of portable power is available with a 70% damaged battery. The BD-900 can find and tell you that one battery is causing your problems. And you can completely fit the problem using the charger. That easy answer will come later.
Damaged or under -capacity batteries can be found using the charger. Reviving batteries that are 'set in their ways' is also an option. Testing capacity, discharge/recharge, and, of course, simple recharging at different current levels are options. Learning what your batteries can do is easy with the four independent LCD displays. The display can tell you the voltage, total current used to charge, how much current the battery can hold, time in charge and discharge mode and recharge capacity. The cheap charger can do much of the work of chargers costing three times as much. Is the charger hard to use?
The charger is easy to operate once you read the manual and practice with it a couple of times. You'll soon learn the charger can give you a lot of information about your batteries. It is accurate enough to tell me the condition of the batteries.
The charger isn't perfect. The 200mA default charge level is too low. The charger has a hard time detecting when to turn off the charge at the low 200mA level. I normally set the charge level to 700mA but you can charge at 200, 500, 700, 1000, 1500 & 1800mA. If the batteries are around 70% of full charge then I'll use a higher charge current up to the maximum of 1800mA. I'm leery of the thermal shutdown safety. Fast charges do not give the 'heat sensor bands' accurate heat temperatures of the core of the batteries. Because of the slow response time of the sensors, I've melted and sunk the fragile plastic leg on the number-three button of the charger. It still worked while it was sunk and I did a repair to the button but I would only use fast charge with nearly full batteries. It really depends on how much of a hurry I'm in.
I've saved the best part of the charger for last. The charger measures the capacity of batteries. I've matched my batteries to similar capacities. Now the portable toy batteries drain and exhaust at the same time. No single battery gets over-discharged; they all quit at the same time. My portable toys run longer, last longer and the batteries are now protected from damage. When the toy runs out of power all batteries are equally drained.
The charger is a gold mine. I've saved so much money by guess what is wrong and not throwing away unknown performance batteries. Just match the batteries, charge them and go. All of my toys run longer. The BC-900 has even found a few 'toad' batteries, bad batteries, which I would have been mixed in with the good batteries. Imagine the problem I would have had if I mixed the bad batteries with good ones?
The BC-900 is a bargain. It comes with lots of accessories. There is a nylon carrying case for the charger and accessories, 4xAA and 4xAAA rechargeable batteries and C & D size battery adapters. The batteries are only of average capacity and I never use the C/D adapters. The charger is the best part of the package.
I've used the charger regularly for almost a year. It works so well that I recently bought a second one. For years I've wondered why no company ever built such an informative charger. Imagine how much money I've wasted throwing away and replacing battery that I thought were bad. I suspect I've thrown away a lot of good batteries. The charger is really is a bargain. You'd benefit from this charger too.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
roostrfsh
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Location: Stockton, CA, USA
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
STILL living in and loving California.
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