La Crosse Technology BC700 Alpha Power Battery Charger

It seems a great product. The individual display for each of the four batteries is a nice feature. Since I have only had it for a month and haven't figured out how to do a fast charge yet I have to give it four stars. But that is just because I will need more time to tell if it proves to be as good as it appears.

I was looking for a battery charger that would help my rechargeable batteries last longer and be charged with their maximum power. I found exactly what I was seeking in the BC700 Alpha.
The BC700 Alpha Power Battery Charger is as easy to use as conventional chargers that just "recharge" a battery. Yet the recycling option on the BC700 does a much better job of extending a rechargeable battery's life as well as making sure the battery's charge is at its maximum possible size.
I use a Nikon D2H for both sports action as well as special events and weddings/receptions so I don't have any video to share but the still flash pictures I took last Saturday at a friend's wedding reception using batteries recharged on the BC700 Alpha were superb in quality. The batteries kept a full charge throughout the evenings events for the full time of 2 1/2 hours of steady picture taking. I never had one pause between pictures when I had to wait for my Nikon SB800 Speedlight flash to signal "ready" before I took the next flash picture.
I will highly recommend the BC700 Alpha to even casual users.

I was looking for a good charger with individual battery controls when charging multiple batteries. I needed it to be compact and lightweight for travel.

I read several different reviews of several chargers (this one and others) and concluded that this one looked promising. So I purchased it and hoped for the best.

I was not disappointed. I have now charged almost 40 NiMH hybrid batteries and it does great. I can tell that it keeps the temnperatures down significantly below that of the cheaper chargers that typically come with the batteries and that have more simplistic time-duration controls.

The displays for each battery are also surprisingly informative and I have grown to really appreciate and depend upon that level of insight and control over each battery.

The controls are simple. However, it took me a few cycles to get the button-pressing-sequence down. But it is now pretty much a wrote sequence and, once learned, makes the use totally trivial.

My only real complaint is that the power supply "brick" that it requires ("brick" is probably unfair, it's not that big) does not have any provision for stowing the plug prongs. THat is one of my pet pieves when manufacturers insist on using that type of "brick". It makes it most unrully and irratating to pack for travel (which I do a lot). Stowable power prongs should be the norm, not these unstowable typwes.

That said, this is in all other aspects a wonderful product and I would most heartily recommend it to anyone wanting a relatively small, compact, lightweight but flexible charger with lots of ability to control the charging of recharable batteries.

It works as advertised. I really like the job it does and am quire happy that I bought it.

So many times I would grab a set of batteries to put in my camera, flash... and because 1 of the 4 batteries was not up to snuff, I was dead in the water. With this charger you know which battery may cause you problems and you can recondition it. I will never buy a charger that doesn't give feed back again. This charger is also very compact so good things do come in small packages.