La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger

There is a hidden danger to buying the BC-900 (and I'm sure it applies to the BC-700) that hasn't been written about yet.

When you catch up testing and refreshing and charging all of your rechargeable batteries, there's a let-down or feeling of ennui as you realize there are no more batteries to fix. It makes you want to run radios and flashlights just to run down the batteries.

Perhaps we can call it the "empty battery nest syndrome"...

This smart charger is such an improvement over the standard no-frills chargers that I've had over the years. This one can find batteries that are past their rechargable prime and also rejuvinate others to get the most out of them.

Most standard chargers can't tell if one of the batteries you're charging isn't keeping up with the rest. They're all charged for the same amount of time with no regard for the individual battery's condition. By charging each battery individually you can find out if one of them isn't charging to it's fullest capacity which will ultimately determine how long that camera, flash unit, or toy runs. If you've got a bad battery in with the others it's going to shorten the run time of whatever it's in.

You can run it through the discharge/charge cycle and bring it back to it's fullest capacity, or if you find that it's just run out of life and is no longer taking a full charge you can take it out of service and eliminate the source of shortened run times in you electronic appliances.

The refresh mode to me takes too long, several days sometimes, to discharge and charge the battery repeatedly until it can hold no higher capacity. I've found just running one that may be lagging behind through the regular discharge mode a time or two which discharges and then charges the battery one time seems to bring back a battery that has lost it's energy.

After you've run your batteries on the "smart" La Crosse charger you'll find that they last longer because they've been individually charged to their highest individual capacity instead of being cut off mid charge because the "dumb" charger has no way of knowing whether the individual battery has really been fully charged.

It's a good thing...

I know many people like the product and its features -- me too, initially. But after using it for just over a year now, the slots "3" and "4" starts displaying "000" no matter what kind of batteries I put in. Sometimes, it would seems to start charging, showing the current. Then in a few seconds, it will go to "000". The manual says it will show "000" when overheat. But for me, the "000" will show up even when it first started and the unit is cold! I have the firmware 33 BTW. Slots 1 and 2 seem to be fine. Just 3 and 4. But charging 2 batteries at a time is a pain...

This has been a great purchase. I have been using an Olympus charger (bought in 2001) and a Sony charger (bought in 2004). Several batteries no longer were chargeable with those 2 chargers.

This charger brought them back to life. It works great and I love seeing the information on the batteries, instead of just one little light.

Works as advertised. The included batteries, case etc. are great. Highly recommended charger.

Purchased to check out a dozens of weak NiCd batteries used in solar lights. Majority of batteries proved weak (below mA-Hr rating) and discarded. It does work well to recondition batteries but don't get your hopes up, a bad battery is bad battery, period, even this charger won't bring them back to live. Overall, I like this product, easy to use and gives details on what's going on inside these expensive batteries. Now, I test all new batteries and label them by capacity (mA-Hr) and date to complete a comparison of NiCd vs. NiMh lifetime in my solar lights. Arizona heat helped killed dozens of my NiCd's, so this charger is allowing me to run a real world comparison! Cool.