Quickcharger

I'd like to thank the folks at C.Crane for sending the QuickCharger to me for review purposes. Their catalog is filled with unique and useful items, stop by their website and see all the great products they offer.

The QuickCharger can charge both Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Nickel Cadmium (NiCad) batteries in sizes AAA, AA, C and D.

Specifications

Case material	Plastic
Power supply	Included AC adapter
Supported battery types and sizes	NiMH and NiCad AAA, AA, C & D. From 1 to 4 at a time
Size	6" x 8" x 2.4"
Weight	1.1 lbs
Special features	Intelligent, negative pulse charging LCD readout Analyze mode Soft Start for cool charging Fast charge times Rejects batteries that cannot be charged Intelligent Discharge can revive NiCads suffering from memory effects Batteries can be stored in charger and will be kept topped off.

If you're anything like me, and I'm assuming that most of my readers are, then you've got lots of neat stuff like digital cameras, Palm computers, flashlights, remote controls, remote controlled toys, radios, GPS receivers and many other useful gadgets or neat toys. These devices have one thing in common and that is they all eat batteries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My digital camera takes 4 AA batteries and I can take about 50 to 60 photos over a 2 hour period with one set of batteries and my GPS gets about 12 hours of constant use on on set of 2. Some of these devices won't work well with normal alkaline batteries and buying expensive single use photo lithium batteries gets old very fast. Or maybe you're just tired of ordering alkaline batteries by the boatload. Rechargeable batteries are the way to go, their initial cost is reasonable and you can usually get around 500 charges out of them before they start to lose their ability to hold a charge. NiMH are the most common rechargeable batteries you'll find on store shelves these days but NiCad can still be purchased from specialty stores and from C.Crane's catalog as well. For high drain devices like a digital camera NiMH are the best choice as they can provide the steady high current that such devices require. Their main drawback is that they lose about 1% of their charge a day when stored. NiCads can't provide the current needed for high drain devices, but they work fine for low drain devices like portable radios and they don't lose their power when stored. They do however suffer from memory effects if not discharged and charged correctly.

One thing in common to all rechargeable batteries is that you must have a device to recharge them. Most chargers on the market today are either trickle chargers that take 12 to 18 hours to charge a set of 4 AA batteries or fast chargers that can do it in a few hours but heat the batteries till they're hot enough to raise blisters on your fingers. Heating batteries during the charge process prevents them from taking a full charge and will cut down on their overall life span. Taking 12 hours or longer was never acceptable to me so I've always used fast chargers and lived with the fact that I was not getting maximum charge or maximum life from my batteries. Chargers are also either "dumb" or "smart". Cheap, "dumb" chargers will put the batteries through a full charge cycle regardless of their current charge condition, possibly overcharging them and shortening their life. Most dumb chargers, fast or slow, will just shut off when the charge cycle is over, leaving NiMH batteries to deplete day by day even though you've left them in the charger. Smart chargers on the other hand can tell the current charge state and act accordingly, quickly charging only partly discharged batteries and preventing overcharging, but many of these do not offer discharge circuitry or "top off" modes and few of them offer more than one or two LED's to keep you informed of the charging process. And almost all of the fast chargers, even the smart ones will heat the batteries up to a point where they're too hot to hold in your hand and certainly too hot to put into an expensive device without letting them cool off first..

I know what you're saying, "Why does charging batteries have to be this complex? Can't I just buy a charger that is smart enough to charge my batteries properly and keep them charged without damaging them and without me having to constantly monitor their condition?"

Finally the answer is yes, you can! Enter the C.Crane QuickCharger. The QuickCharger is designed to properly condition and charge your batteries without taking half a day or longer, overheating them, letting them discharge once they're charged or forcing you to constantly monitor them. The QuickCharger can charge AAA, AA, C and D size NiMH and NiCad batteries.

The QuickCharger has a two tone plastic housing, dark grey on the bottom and a lighter grey on the top. There's a small LCD screen and two red buttons on the top, one marked Battery Analyzer and the other Discharge System Override. There's also a translucent smoke grey cover over the battery area. Opening the cover reveals 4 "V" shaped areas for the batteries (V shaped so that all battery sizes will be centered against the contacts) with polarity indicators, there's a contact for each battery's positive terminal and a spring loaded contact for the negative end. The spring loaded contact has a red plastic tab and must be pulled toward the front of the unit in order to get a battery in, then you can let it back against the battery. The springs are fairly strong and hold the batteries tightly for good contact. No changes need to be made to go from AAA to D size batteries. The QuickCharger is well made and fit and finish is very good. If you're the kind of person who is concerned about appearances, the QuickCharger will look good on your desk.

Using the QuickCharger is about as simple as it gets, open the door, pull the contacts back and drop your batteries in place positive end toward the rear, close the door (which activates the charging circuit) and forget about it until the batteries are charged or until you need them. There is no specific reverse polarity warning, but you will get the "bad battery" indicator if you get them in wrong and the QuickCharger will not attempt to charge them this way. For those of us that crave information, the QuickCharger will make us happy. Place a battery in the unit and, without closing the cover, press the Battery Analyzer button and in a few seconds the battery's voltage and a bar graph representing it's remaining charge will appear on the LCD screen. Doing this with a single battery works best, using the Analyze function with multiple batteries will give you the average voltage and capacity for all the batteries combined, for example, displaying 50% remaining with two batteries if one battery is almost dead and the other nearly fully charged. A bad battery indicator will appear if the batteries cannot be charged. There's also an Intelligent Discharge System. This is mainly for NiCad batteries, it will automatically and fully discharge the batteries before recharging begins, thus preventing the batteries from taking a memory or removing any memory effects they may already have. If you've got NiCads that read fully charged but act like they're dead or nearly dead, this can often return them to normal. There's a button on the front to override the discharge system if it starts automatically and you don't want it to run, and you can also force the discharge cycle to begin if it does not do so automatically and you want it to run.

Once you've put the batteries in and shut the lid the QuickCharger will analyze the batteries and the intelligent circuitry then decides how best to charge your batteries and the process will begin. The current voltage will be displayed the bar graph will indicate whether the batteries are being discharged, charged or are fully charged. The current charge cycle will also be displayed. The discharge cycle is represented by an icon marked "I.D.S." on the LCD screen. The first charge cycle is called Soft Start and is designed to start the charge process slowly without heating the batteries. Once the Soft Start mode is done then the unit will go to Fast Charge mode which will bring the batteries up to 80 to 90 percent of their capacity. At this point the unit switches to Top-Off mode which brings the batteries to their maximum charge. When this is complete the icon that indicates that the batteries are fully charged will appear and the QuickCharger will continue supplying a trickle of current to the batteries to keep them topped off until you are ready to use them. Voltage will continue to be displayed as well as the bar graph showing full charge. Being a "smart" charger as well as offering superior Negative Pulse charging, the QuickCharger will not overcharge batteries, so you don't have to worry about putting in batteries that are only partially discharged and you can leave them in the charger, and topped up, for as long as you like. At no time during the entire charge cycle have the batteries felt more than slightly warm.

Many current chargers will only charge batteries in pairs, leaving you out of luck if you should want to charge just one or three. The QuickCharger does not have that limitation, being able to charge in any number from 1 to 4. You should however not mix and match battery sizes or types together at one time.

Charge times depend on how many batteries you put in and their size and capacity. These times range from 1 hour and 20 minutes for 2 AAA NiMH cells to 16 hours for 4 NiMH D cells. During my tests I found that it took a little over 2 hours to charge 2 of my 1800 mAh NiMH AA batteries when almost fully discharged and just about double that to charge 4. I tested the unit with AAA, AA and D batteries and found it worked excellently with all of them.