Hitech 12 Bay Battery Charger for AA - AAA - 9V Batteries

I am hoping this will last a very long time. It handles what I need it to do. The only flaw is that it cannot be mounted like on a wall to help keep it up out the way. Yes it is large but you will be surprised it is not much bigger than all the batteries it holds. This helps us a lot since we go thru 6-AAA batteries in 3-hours and we keep 6 on the charger at all times but should we forget, it does not take that long to get fully charged.

Personally, we love it!

Update 10-2012

The unit stopped working about a month ago. Out of all the slots available, 2 do not work on AAA. The 9v doesn't charge at all, infact, it didn't work since the day I got it...I just took to long in trying it. I now have the ability to charge 6 AA batteries or 4 AAA.

I originally bought it because of its capacity. I will be much more cautios on my next charger I purchase.

Simple and effective. Easy to operate. Batteries are easy to install and remove from individual bays. Charged all my batteries without an issue. Worked well with AC as well as car adapter. Definitely worth the price.

UPDATE: So I have been using this item for seven months and... one of the terminals is now broken. The spring-loaded contact is loose and will not hold a battery. It's not a complicated mechanism, so it's very disappointing. No reason for this part to break, unless the materials used are shoddy, or not constructed well.

Would I buy this item again? Yes. But now have to be extra careful when inserting and removing batteries. It's just a simple spring! Should not break if used as intended. The only reason why I am removing one star.

UPDATE 2: I purchased the special bit to open the unit so I can fix the broken slot myself. Discovered two things:

1 The contact is kept tight with a spring, with a rounded wire loop placed over a post. The loop was not placed over the post, so there was no tension. A simple fix.

2 Two screws keeping the circuit board in place (there are 3 total) were missing.

So the issue is the construction and quality control process. Whoever put this thing together did not care enough to do it properly. Materials are fine, but the effort to put it together is shoddy.

Buy Hitech 12 Bay Battery Charger for AA - AAA - 9V Batteries Now

It's been a pain trying to find a battery charger that can both charge single batteries and batteries of different sizes.

This thing works great! The only downside is it can seem a little slow if you fill every slot, but I expected that. Better for the batteries, anyway, so no stars lost.

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The only downside was that very dead batteries would not charge. Five minutes in my old dumb charger solved the problem giving the battery enough charge that the smart charger recognized it. Aside from problems with very dead batteries, it works super, and is generally superior to a dumb charger, if that make sense to people. The discharge option helped to resynchronize even NiMH batteries for which that function is not recommended, but I have been using it occasionally with low discharge NiMH batteries? These batteries are listed for holding up to 80% of their charge for up to a year,but invariable one goes stone dead before the other in normal use. In that case a dumb charger brings it back to life (a five to ten minute charge), and then the smart charger recognizes it. I suspect the manufacturer could likely fix this with a software tweak, but for the moment I still have my old dumb charger from Harbor Freight which solves that problem.

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The description of this product is deceptive. It says "microprocessor controlled" but this is NOT an intelligent charger. Brand new freshly charged AA Eneloop batteries, "charged" for over 8 hours in this charger.

Depleted AAA Eneloops took 9 hours to charge. Depleted AA Eneloops took 18+ hours (I finally went to bed).

(And no, there's nothing wrong with the batteries. Brand new Eneloops, less than a week old.)

But the kicker is this: Take a "charged" battery out of this charger, let it sit for 5 minutes, put it back in the charger, and it will "charge" for another 4 hours.

And contrary to what the description says, the batteries do get hot. How they managed to combine such incredibly slow charging with heating the batteries is quite an accomplishment. You get the worst of both worlds.

Forget about this product completely, and get a real charger like the Sysmax (Nitecore) Intellicharge i4. You would have to get two of those to match the capacity of this one, and the total cost would be ten dollars more, but you will have MUCH better charging.

The Sysmax charger, in comparison, passes both tests. New Eneloops, and freshly recharged batteries, are recognized as "Full & Done" after just a couple of minutes, instead of overcharging for hours

This thing is junk. It's just going to ruin your batteries with overcharging.

I tried returning it for a refund, but the seller claimed not to have received the package.