UPDATE: (03-26-2011) It has been more than 3 years since I wrote this review. This charger is still working great!
I have owned at least 8 chargers in the past, Maha's, Panasonic, etc. It is nice to see that this charger shows you the mAh on the LCD panel as the battery charges up. Most chargers you only see an LED indicator to signal when charging is done.
Compared to the specs of BC-900, the BC700 can only go up to 700mAH (the max) which means it is somewhat slower than the BC900. But the faster the battery charges, the hotter it gets. And one of the worst enemy of rechargeable batteries is heat. Less heat means longer life for the batteries.
Pros:
- 3 adjustable charging speeds
- Will show you the actual capacity in mAh. This is good so you know which battery needs to be refreshed. You always want to use batteries with the same capacities in pair or in a group.
- 4 independent charging stations with individual LED readouts. "AA's" and "AAA's" can be charged in different combinations. Don't you hate those gadgets that only use 3 batteries like portable radios? (walkie-talkies). You end up with 1 un-used battery if you bought a 4-pack. How will you charge it if your charger only charges in pairs?
- Reasonable price for an excellent charger
- Small and light. Better portability
- Multi-volt up to 240v. Very useful if you travel a lot to other countries.
Cons:
Now I have to stop myself doing impulse buying on NiMh's because I enjoy using this charger too much. La Crosse Technology BC-700 Alpha Power Battery Charger
Just in case you were looking for the La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger: please be advised that ths is NOT the same charger.
Except for the color, the BC700 looks exactly the same as the better-known BC900. However, it is actually a "handicapped" version of the old charger. Its charging current can only go up to 700mA in three steps (200/500/700). The BC900, on the other hand, can go up to 1000mA for 4 cells, or 1800mA for 2 cells. Also the BC900 package includes eight NiMH rechargeable cells (4 AA and 4 AAA), eight C/D cell adaptors, and a carrying case. The BC700 does not come with any bonus items.
This is not to say that the BC700 is a bad product. Quite the contrary, it is better than any other NiMH AA chargers in the market except for BC900 and Maha MH-C9000. If you can find it at a substantial saving (like maybe 30% off from the price of BC900), it is still a good buy. But as it is right now, I recommend getting its older brother instead.
[update on June 13, 2008]
Recently the price of BC700 has settled to a level much lower than that of BC900 (partially because the price of BC900 has gone up), so it is now an excellent buy - especially if you intend to buy some low-self-discharge NiMH cells separately. In light of this, the criticism in my original review now seems unnecessarily harsh. Too bad I'm not allowed to change the star-rating for this product.
[Update on April 7, 2010]
I hope my overly critical review above did not discourage anyone from buying the BC-700. As of this moment, it is the best value if you are looking for an advanced battery charger/analyzer. This is because:
- The BC-9009 has been recalled recently due to excessive overheating/meltdown incidents.
- The Powerex WizardOne Battery Charger-Analyzer is more powerful, but costs twice as much as the BC-700.
- The newest La Crosse BC500 has severely limited functions compared to the BC-700 (see my review for details), yet it costs more.
This is a great charger and when I bought it it was about $15 less than the BC-900. Now the BC-900 is less than this charger. The difference between this charger and the BC-900 is the lack of the faster charging speeds and the accessories. Definitley buy the BC-900 and the accessory package for less money. It seems they are constantly playing games with the pricing on these two chargers. The BC-700 charger does a great job of reconditioning batteries and the charging speed is usually between 2-3 hours for the different capacity batteries that I have. (1800mh - 2650mh). Time is not an issue for me as I have about 10 sets of AA's and can just keep swapping them out. From what i've read the slower charging speed is better for the life span of your battery any way.
AFTER careful consideration & making additional observations as well as in the interest of presenting a more equitable view of my recent experiences with La Crosse BC-700 AA/AAA battery chargers over the past month, here is my updated review. Much work has been done to be helpful. It is my hope that this examination of mine is supportive to persons considering purchasing this rather versatile charger. If this is too lengthy of a review & you don't have time for it all then please scroll to the Bottom Line at the end, thanks (sometimes we disabled veterans have too much time on our hands).
Initially, after purchasing & receiving 4 of these little chargers, the BC-700 had me nearly mesmerized, being the first reasonably decent "smart" battery chargers we'd ever owned. Once the novelty wore off though & after making many careful observations, a lot of things began to stand out that just didn`t make sense. For most of us, the BC-700 is a big step up from common "dumb" battery chargers we are all familiar with... but there are some limitations with these chargers that had we known about we would have never purchased them in the first place. No doubt these chargers will perform better than any simple AA/AAA battery chargers on the market, giving one far greater control & selection over the charging processes, offering several charging/discharging modes & generally protecting one`s investment in small, rechargeable batteries. Its default programming makes it quite simple as well as safe to use... but there are problems at present: problems with quality control, problems with the charger's operations & very annoying problems with customer service (as has been noted by other reviewers). Am hopeful that La Crosse will soon these address these problems & that this charger will evolve into a better one. First, the problems, then the better stuff...
QUALITY CONTROL:
* 1 of our 4 chargers has its compartment buttons quite uneven in their seating, curving & dipping this way & that, spoiling a nice, high-tech appearing charger.
* 2 of our 4 chargers have a most annoying, distracting piece of dust underneath the view plate right where the readings are taken for one of the compartments.
* 1 of our 4 chargers requires the Current/Display/Mode buttons to be mashed quite hard in order to get them to perform their functions.
* 3 of our 4 chargers are amazingly difficult to insert AA batteries into as well as removing out of the compartments (negative charging tabs are sticking out excessively).
OPERATIONS:
* One compartment will charge batteries a good amount more than the others three for some reason, even while charging evenly-matched, quality batteries that have been top-off charged only 10 days beforehand & then using "Test" mode to determine capacity. This is always compartment #3 or #4 for some reason, over a dozen tests having been performed to back up these observations. No matter the brand, no matter the type of rechargeable cell (5 different brands & types of batteries were tested), this strange phenomenon is observed consistently. In all fairness, this occurs while using the default 200 mA charging, so perhaps this current is not quite enough to trigger the 4th battery to fully charge up to end the charging cycle consistently. Better results are seen when programming the chargers to use 500 mA of current to charge 2000-2500 mAh rated AA batteries instead of the lower default current, as then the negative delta voltage cutoff seems to trigger in a more balanced fashion using higher current. 200 mA charging, though, appears to work just fine for AAA NiMH cells, both with standard cells as well as hybrid.
* Have had our remaining NiCADs (low capacity solar yard light batteries) reach over 1.7 volts & a couple hitting 1.83 volts while charging... on just 200 mA charging current, no less. Rather high for a 1.2 volt rated cell, is it not? This is being measured while charging them at 1/3rd of the cell's rated capacity (0.33C).
* There is a most annoying, consistent anomaly concerning the final trickle charging (the following figures are observed using new, broken-in/cycled, low self-discharging Sanyo eneloop AA & AAA hybrid NiMH batteries). As the first cell reaches "Full" charge it is then trickled between 17-19 mA until the next battery reads "Full". Then the first charged battery at once reads a 12-13 mA trickle charge as the last cell to read "Full" receives the 17-19 mA trickle. Same with the 3rd, same with the 4th, regardless of timing. Even if the trickle charging goes on for days, the first 3 to charge up will continue to show a 12-13 mA trickle charging & the last to charge will still show 17-19 mA! This is rather unusual, though it strikes me as being a bit bad for low self-discharging AAA hybrid cells (such as Sanyo eneloop batteries) to be receiving this slight overcharge over the course of days, as we have to do sometimes when we are away from home. Not a huge problem, granted, just a minor one.
* The AAA cells make a harsh grinding as they are inserted into the compartments due to the grooves in the positive charging tabs. The AA batteries don't do this, just the AAAs. It is a significant scraping. If the AAAs could be placed into the compartments positive side first then this wouldn't occur, though the design of the tabs will not presently permit this.
* When observing the charging current being displayed as the batteries are inserted while others are charging/discharging OR as they finalize their charging OR are removed while others are still charging, there is in all cases a significant "bump" upwards in the charging current for the remaining cells that takes over a minute & a half to settle back down to where they all were before. To me this clearly demonstrates no true independence of charging compartments, as does the final trickle charging anomaly.
CUSTOMER SERVICE:
* "The lack of" would be more appropriate, truly. At least, at present it is. After over 2 weeks of phone calls (just TRY & leave a message on their customer support line & see what happens) as well as numerous emails to La Crosse support, we finally received a phone call from someone (likely a salesman, not a technical person) who didn't know what he was talking about, even arguing with me that the BC-900 is the newer model than the BC-700, which it is not. Additionally, no support email was received back until the morning after my initial BC-700 review was posted late in the evening before. That finally got their attention, it would seem.
* The La Crosse employee who called also said that the trickle charging inconsistency "won't hurt anything". Respectfully, am disagreeing... particularly with the hybrid AAAs over a period of several days. We simply no longer have enough faith to leave the chargers operating while we are gone a day or two & not have a few mildly overcharged AAA batteries waiting for us when we return. You see, we also own a good number of solar AA/AAA battery chargers that split a mere 100 mA charging current 4 ways... 25 mA current charging per cell on a clear day. Our AAA batteries build full charges in them over a period of several days in full Sunshine on just 25 mA current each. While using standard NiMH batteries, which have a fast self-discharging rate, the trickle charging anomaly of the BC-700 is no problem whatsoever so far as can be discerned. However, with the low self-discharging NiMH hybrid cells we are using I beg to differ. We see a difference in what 2 AAA hybrid cells measure already that were left in 2 BC-0700 chargers trickling for days while we were out. There is a small but measured drop in performance of about 3% each for these 2 new AAA eneloop cells that trickled @ 18 mA for 2 extra days. The other 6 AAA batteries, 3 in each charger, actually gained capacity (trickling @ 12 mA), but the 2 at 18 mA each lost 3% capacity according to earlier logged values. A 10-12 mA trickle current for each AAA hybrid battery is just fine, though 18-19 mA over a period of days is too much in these types of cells in my opinion.
* Though the BC-900 has been out for quite a while now & the BC-700 for a fair amount of time, there is not so much as one item that is presently listed in their FAQ for either model charger as of the writing of this review. Now, that is simply difficult for me to understand (La Crosse product models of many various types & functions are individually selected once one is into their website's FAQ section). Am hopeful that this, too, will be remedied soon.
Am rating this charger 4 stars because it apparently DOES perform okay except for the aberrations & limitations noted. One star off for quality control, total charger operations & for lackluster customer support. 3.5 stars would be given if it were possible, but 3 stars as in my initial review now seems a bit too harsh. Sadly, we simply did not have in these chargers what we needed for the large investment we've made in over 5 dozen top-shelf Sanyo eneloop AA & AAA hybrid batteries. We regularly use them all too, so our chargers pretty much run 24/7/365. As we need more precision for our particular applications & goals, we have returned 3 of the 4 BC-700 chargers for the problems listed here in this review. We are keeping 1 of them & continue to put it through its paces with our standard NiMH batteries. Any relevant info we gain as a result will be passed on with an editing of this review. We have since purchased 2 Maha Powerex MH-C9000 chargers (because of our need for truly independent charging compartments as well as more precise options) & they are both performing splendidly thus far.
BOTTOM LINE: The various charging modes of the BC-700 chargers are a real plus, they look great overall, are apparently sturdy enough & will likely perform well for years to come. 500 mA of charging current seems to charge AA 2000-2500 mAh rated rechargeable cells in a much more balanced way than the default programming of 200 mA of current, so one would do well to consider using it for this application. As La Crosse never states that their charger's compartments are fully independent from each other, we do not have a complaint coming in this. If you require the utmost control over your AA/AAA battery charging process, have more options & precision as well as have the extra bucks to spend then consider getting the Maha Powerex MH-C9000 charger-analyzer. For most everyone's improved AA/AAA battery charging needs, the La Crosse BC-700 is a handy, versatile, compact & affordable battery charger that will likely serve you well.
* Edited to correct a grammatical errors * - Rechargeable Batteries - La Crosse - Battery Charger Aa Or Aaa - Nimh'
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