Battery Chargers - AA, Ansmann max e speed set any good?

[planetf1]

Hi,
I get through many AA's for devices around the home, and in flashgun etc.

Previously I've had a "Soshine SC3" which promised a lot, but now tends to simply flash the lcd after a few minutes and/or cook the batteries. I have a suspicion that rather than the same device as a similar sony, it's a cheap clone which doesn't do what it's documented to do!

Yesterday I picked up an "Ansman Max E Speed charger set" at a photo show. It's a local LCE show so I'm sure could be returned (unopened).

Whilst I didn't get it from these guys here's a picture/info http://www.tantronics.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_ansmann_maxe_Battery_Charger_1.html with more
Details are at http://www.ansmann.de/cms/fileadmin/ansmann-www/pdf/2009_ANSMANN-Catalouge_de_gb.pdf

I wanted to get a respected brand, and get a device that does delta-V, temp, timer monitoring. This box does. HOWEVER I noticed that it doesn't monitor individual cells - they appear to be paired. Even though I usually use in pairs, this could lead to insufficient charging.

But I need to balance that against general quality/price. For most chargers on the market I can't even find the kind of information you can see on p28 of the second link, where there's a detailed matrix of capabilities.

It seems the first charger in this range to actually "tick all the boxes" is the energy8 ie http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ansmann-520...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1270161259&sr=8-1, but this is around double the price

Any thoughts on value for money and if this charger is otherwise pretty good (compared to a cheap/undocumented one)? Or is the paired charging such a bad idea that I should return it?

Thanks
Nigel.

 

[OneTen]

I took a punt on one of these: Technoline BL-700

I've been very impressed with it. The advantage for me was that batteries are charged individually, so I could charge 1,2,3 or 4 as required. You can also see how much charge is left in a battery. It's expensive but I've found it to be great value for money.

 

[FiestaRed]

A few months ago Ibought one of the Maha C9000 chargers. Quite a bit more expensive than the run of the mill ones, but it was certainly worth the extra.

I had three or four sets of batteries that I thought were past it, so I put them through the Refresh/Analyze mode on the charger, brilliant, they're now good as new.

One thing I was told to look for when buying a "decent" battery charger was to make sure that it had independent slots for each battery. Otherwise any dud batteries could appear fully charged. Also make sure the transformer is not built into the charger.

I'll add a link to the UK supplier when I can find it, the one below is a review of the Maha C9000.

http://www.digitaldingus.com/reviews/maha/mhc9000/index.php