LaCrosse BC-700 ?

[carnage]

It looks like a decent multi-chem (flexible) charger. Can't speak to durability.

HKJ rates it as a very good charger.

http://lygte-info.dk/review/Review Charger GyrFalcon All-44 UK.html

I don't read of too many people owning the brand, FWIW. You can buy it from IMRbatteries dot com for $30, right now.

Chris

It's because of HKJ reviews is why I'm asking about this charger, its has a good review.

 

[apagogeas]

I don't like it. I could never charge my Eneloop pros on this...500 was too low, 700mA still seemed to miss termination. They just got hot and probably overcharged every time.

1000mA is the sweet spot for 2000mAh cells IMO. And good for 2500 cells too.

For $32, the Opus 3100 is hard to beat. The 1500mA or 2000mA rate will be handy for 2500mAh+ cells. Even if you don't use Li-Ion, the opportunity is there. And the AA/AAA cells are spaced further apart to possibly keep them cooler.

I still use my BC-700 on occasion but it's far from my first choice.

I have charged quite many AA at 500mA and AAA at 300mA, judged by the charge put in, I have never experienced a missed termination with Lii-500 or having batteries too hot to touch. I see it as very reliable charger to be honest and I have it in action daily for around 500 days so far.

 

[carnage]

I have charged quite many AA at 500mA and AAA at 300mA, judged by the charge put in, I have never experienced a missed termination with Lii-500 or having batteries too hot to touch. I see it as very reliable charger to be honest and I have it in action daily for around 500 days so far.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[CandleLite]

I have been using a BC-900 as my primary charger for about 10 years now with no problems at all. When it came out there was talk about how it would melt batteries etc. but I have experienced none of that. Purely anecdotal, but I believe that there are many more good La Crosses out there than bad. It is easy to use and gives a lot of info about the condition of the battery. Especially handy is the refresh mode that will discharge/recharge up to 20 times until there is no improvement in the measured mAh. I recently found an old Eneloop from 2006 that measured 340 mAh on charging but after almost 3 days at 500 mA charge/250mA discharge now reads as 1948 mAh. I believe that it probably went through 5 or 6 refresh cycles. All my Eneloops from 2006-2008 are still going good at around 1950-2000 mAh with refreshing occasionally as necessary.
I usually charge at 500 mA so that the battery is not stressed. It takes a little longer but I always have a fully charged battery ready to go so that there is no need to rush the charging at a higher rate. The BC-900 is a great charger in my experience and I expect that the BC-700 is similar.
The Opus looks interesting and the single advantage that I see is that it has is the ability to do Li-ion. I have a separate Nitecore Digicharger for my LI-ions. I note that the Opus will refresh only 3 times in the refresh cycle so that it would be necessary to run the cycle again perhaps to be sure that you have refreshed the battery completely.

Your experience may vary, but for 10 years of service keeping my envelops going for about 30 bucks is pretty good and I have a high regard for La Crosse and what I consider to be a good , durable product that they produced.

 

[pinoy]

I just completed the first charge for two new Fujitsu AAA and I was surprised that slots 1 and 3 reached charge just over 1100 mAh. This is odd considering the max advertised capacity is 800 mAh. I got scared and ended the cycle manually after six hours with a charge rate of 200 mA and it hasn't terminated. The cells were warm. I believe the end voltage was around 1.52 V.

 

[ChrisGarrett]

I just completed the first charge for two new Fujitsu AAA and I was surprised that slots 1 and 3 reached charge just over 1100 mAh. This is odd considering the max advertised capacity is 800 mAh. I got scared and ended the cycle manually after six hours with a charge rate of 200 mA and it hasn't terminated. The cells were warm. I believe the end voltage was around 1.52 V.

You should use a rate of 500mA for AAAs and 700mA for AAs. You missed the termination point charging at only 200mA.

My BC-700 misses terminations a lot of times and I wouldn't buy another LaCrosse charger again.

Chris

 

[archimedes]

Although I don't have any LaCrosse chargers, my Maha C9000 would occasionally miss terminations on (especially older) NiMH cells charged at ~ 0.4 - 0.5C

Since I've bumped up the typical charge rate I use for NiMH, to target ~ 0.6 - 0.7C, I've had no issues.