FAQ most frequently asked questions
What is the best battery fast charger?
In itself it cannot be answered without knowing your wishes.
What is important is that the charger charges each battery separately. We no longer sell chargers that don’t do this, but there are still many for sale that don’t work!
Most chargers require 2 batteries at the same time. The disadvantage of this is that the batteries are not fully charged if, for example, the capacity is different or 1 battery is not completely empty.
If the charger is suitable for charging 4 batteries separately, then this charger is called a 4-channel charger. If it can accommodate 8, it is an 8-channel charger. The disadvantage is that most cheap chargers cannot handle 9 volt and thicker batteries (Baby-c & Mono-d).
There are cheap adapters that allow you to convert an AA to a thicker one, which will solve this problem. Separate chargers for 9 volts are available for just over 10 euros.
What capacity batteries should I have?
That depends on what they are used for, the more current (capacity) the battery can hold, the longer you can use it, but the more expensive they are. For many applications this is not necessary at all, for a remote control an old one with a low capacity is good enough. Don’t forget that a rechargeable battery will run out of power after a few months, even if you don’t use it.
Should I discharge a battery?
No, this is no longer necessary, with the arrival of the NIMH/lithium ion it is no longer necessary to completely empty a battery before you can charge it. The so-called memory effect only applies to older NICD batteries.
A rechargeable battery no longer works, throw it away?
Depends, often you can save a rechargeable battery and save your wallet and the environment.
If a rechargeable battery has not been used for a while (sometimes also with new rechargeable batteries) or has been very cold, it may be so discharged (empty) that a charger can no longer get it going. There is a trick to wake it up again so that the charger can do its work again, with this you can breathe (new) life into rechargeable batteries that are too dead. It goes without saying that this is entirely at your own risk and is only for rechargeable batteries.
What you actually do is charge the battery a very small amount, after which your charger can do its work again.
Take an old plug adapter with a maximum of 5 volt output, make sure that the charger has a + and a – (recognizable by the text dc output, some chargers provide alternating voltage and are not suitable for this).
Then connect the – of the adapter (usually the outside of the plug) to the – (bottom) of the rechargeable battery. Then take the + and press it against the + of the rechargeable battery for a maximum of 5 seconds (be careful not to reverse the + & -!).
If the battery becomes warm, stop immediately!
Now let’s see if the rechargeable battery charger takes over, if it doesn’t work yet, repeat the above again. Always make sure that the rechargeable battery does not get warm, normally this would not happen in 5 seconds.
What capacity does a regular battery have?
The capacity of a standard alkaline AA battery is approximately 2700 Mah, so we have achieved the same capacity with rechargeable batteries. A zinc-carbon battery has a capacity of only ± 1200 Mah.