Outdoor Living : La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger

Rating: - Easy to use, lots of info about your batteries
I like this charger because you can just stick any combination of batteries in, and walk away. Or, you can check any parameter, on each of the four slots. Or, you can program for 'refresh' which will bring many old batteries back to a useful life, or 'test' which tells you the capacity of the cell being tested. This unit brought back to life some AA batteries I had bought a year ago with a cheapo charger, that would no longer operate my camera. It's a smart charger that will take care of your batteries.

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Rating: - Caveat - psychological consequences of the BC-900
There is a hidden danger to buying the BC-900 (and I'm sure it applies to the BC-700) that hasn't been written about yet.

When you catch up testing and refreshing and charging all of your rechargeable batteries, there's a let-down or feeling of ennui as you realize there are no more batteries to fix. It makes you want to run radios and flashlights just to run down the batteries.

Perhaps we can call it the "empty battery nest syndrome"...

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Rating: - Great upgrade from "dumb" chargers...
This smart charger is such an improvement over the standard no-frills chargers that I've had over the years. This one can find batteries that are past their rechargable prime and also rejuvinate others to get the most out of them.

Most standard chargers can't tell if one of the batteries you're charging isn't keeping up with the rest. They're all charged for the same amount of time with no regard for the individual battery's condition. By charging each battery individually you can find out if one of them isn't charging to it's fullest capacity which will ultimately determine how long that camera, flash unit, or toy runs. If you've got a bad battery in with the others it's going to shorten the run time of whatever it's in.

You can run it through the discharge/charge cycle and bring it back to it's fullest capacity, or if you find that it's just run out of life and is no longer taking a full charge you can take it out of service and eliminate the source of shortened run times in you electronic appliances.

The refresh mode to me takes too long, several days sometimes, to discharge and charge the battery repeatedly until it can hold no higher capacity. I've found just running one that may be lagging behind through the regular discharge mode a time or two which discharges and then charges the battery one time seems to bring back a battery that has lost it's energy.

After you've run your batteries on the "smart" La Crosse charger you'll find that they last longer because they've been individually charged to their highest individual capacity instead of being cut off mid charge because the "dumb" charger has no way of knowing whether the individual battery has really been fully charged.

It's a good thing...

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Rating: - poor reliability
I know many people like the product and its features -- me too, initially. But after using it for just over a year now, the slots "3" and "4" starts displaying "000" no matter what kind of batteries I put in. Sometimes, it would seems to start charging, showing the current. Then in a few seconds, it will go to "000". The manual says it will show "000" when overheat. But for me, the "000" will show up even when it first started and the unit is cold! I have the firmware 33 BTW. Slots 1 and 2 seem to be fine. Just 3 and 4. But charging 2 batteries at a time is a pain...

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Rating: - Excellent charger
This has been a great purchase. I have been using an Olympus charger (bought in 2001) and a Sony charger (bought in 2004). Several batteries no longer were chargeable with those 2 chargers.

This charger brought them back to life. It works great and I love seeing the information on the batteries, instead of just one little light.

Works as advertised. The included batteries, case etc. are great. Highly recommended charger.