Cheap but reliable battery charger?

linzi1978

Hi

I am fed up with buying batteries for remotes and kids toys etc so am thinking of buying a battery charger, it will mainly be for aa and aaa batteries. I am not clued up on battery chargers at all so was looking for some advice really. Can you use any recarable batteries or do you need to use the make that comes with the charger?

many thanks in advance

linzi

skr00ge

Not all battery chargers are the same. There is a bit of "you get what you pay for" about them. Same with batteries.

This from 7dayshop can charge 8 aa/aaa batteries independently. (Some chargers require you to charge 2 at a time and this can be bad where they have unequal charge levels.). It will show what's charging and what's ready.

7day also have a bunch of cheap aa and aaa. The capacity is measured in mah (milli amp hours) bigger the better. Cheaper AA nimh batteries will be under 1800mAh. More expensive high capacity AAs should have 2500mAh/2650 or more. AAA are in the 800 to1000 mAh range.

Forget batteries that "claim" 2900mAh and higher they will just be hype.

If you ebay, I have had good reliable batteries from "vapextech". They have bulk packs which work out quite cheaply. "Budpak" too. This for example but note the "2/4/6/8 at a time limitation". It seems the same as this from argos which has 1300mAh battieries, very poor capacity.

On the highstreet go to Maplin (electronics) or Jessop (photo) or look for Duracel(Wickes not too expensive)/Sanyo/Energizer(Tesco et al).

Cheers