Do any BF dealers carry Eneloops?

S

Squashfan

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Jun 6, 2012
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I am thinking about picking up some Eneloops. Do any BF dealers carry them? I DO NOT WANT ANY LINKS IN THIS THREAD UNLESS THE LINK GOES TO A BF DEALER! BF rules and not mine. And which version of the charger should I get?
 
Squashfan said:
I guess any charger, Les. I have actually been looking at a La Crosse BC700.
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Great charger, have two, will never own another brand. Great CS too, the display on one went out and they offered to ship a new one before I returned the old but they also sent instructions to disassemble and clean the ribbon connector and it got it working again within minutes.
 
I'm trying to standardize my hurricane electronics to Sanyo AA Eneloops... I chose the Fujifilm SCH808F controller charger.. it inputs 12v dc, 120 v AC and 5 v USB... shown with a deep cycle trolling motor battery I use for my digital portable TV and 12v fans... the battery has a 12v female receptacle permanently attached to the negative terminal.. the charger will handle 1-4 cells... works with my Goal Zero 7w panel

 
Cereal killer... it's a 94 amp hour battery, and have not tried it that much with the Eneloops... I put it together this year before the start of the tropical season, and luckily didn't need it... the Goal Zero 7w panel took a little over 3 hours to charge my first pack of 4 Eneloops (they come partially charged) using the 12v plug using the Fujicell charger... I later obtained a Guide 10 pack and it took about the same time with the USB plug, with a slightly higher charging current... the battery is primarily for my small digital portable TV... after the 8 day power outage in the 2004 season, entertainment moved up a notch on the to-get list
 
Cereal_killer said:
Great charger, have two, will never own another brand. Great CS too, the display on one went out and they offered to ship a new one before I returned the old but they also sent instructions to disassemble and clean the ribbon connector and it got it working again within minutes.
Click to expand...

Can the La crosse recharge one or three batteries? Or is it like most other chargers and can only do two or four at once?

Thanks,
Charles
 
Squashfan said:
Can the La crosse recharge one or three batteries? Or is it like most other chargers and can only do two or four at once?

Thanks,
Charles
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Any amount at a time, fully independent, the only restriction it has is that it'll only charge 2 at a time at 1500mAh, with 3 or four it limits it to 1000mAh max, this is both for power consumption and also because with 4 cells packed tightly they can't cool as fast and they [my AA 3rd gen eneloops] will start to get hot at anything over 500mAh charge rate.

I usually charge my AA's at 500, 700 or even 1000 if I'm in a hurry (but I have 32 cells so there's almost always spares on hand) and 200 if I'm putting them on to charge as I go to bed or leave the house (more for prolonged cell life than safety).

The only complaint I have is that it won't detect cells lower than about .8v but that's only ever been an issue with cheap cells of the kids that can't recover on their own and I have to stick them on a dumb charger for 5 minutes, I have never had an issue with eneloops even tho I regularly drain them to <.8v in my zebralight head lamp because they are such good cells they recover to ~1v within minutes so even if they read "null" when sticking them on the charger they will recover high enough to be detected and start charging on their own in just a couple minutes.
 
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One other point to touch on since I mentioned heat, you never want to try to cool the cells while they're on charge, forced cooling can actually cause missed termination, if you ever do become concerned about heat the best bet would be to use a CPU style fan underneath the charger and try to cool the chargers circuit instead of the cells themselves.
 
I use the BC-500. It's the same price as the 700 but it has a car charger and it's a little more compact. It does get warm if I use it to charge a lot of batteries at a time, but it works very well. I do not own a single battery that doesn't say eneloop on the side and I charge every one of them (sometimes a couple of times a month) with the 500. I've had it for about a year and it's been perfect so far.

I also have a cheaper Sony charger which for all intents and purposes is just as good. It isn't quite as fast and won't do things like run them down and then re-charge and all of that (which in my opinion isn't needed with these batteries), and it doesn't charge as fast, but it does charge each bay individually which is nice. I can mix AA and AAA all at different charge levels on either charger and it works great.

Check out N Lee's reviews on Amazon. He's some kind of battery genius and really helped me when I got setup.

I used to have a crazy expensive charger for single and pack cells when I did a lot of R/C stuff so I knew a little about it all before getting setup. These days, I like the simple approach.
 
Just an FYI, white top duracell rechargable's are rebranded eneloops and can sometimes be found for good deals in stores. Last fall I got 4 4-packs of AA's for $6/each. These are the normal looking "copper top" cells but there are 2 versions, a made in china one with a black ring on top around the positive terminal and a made in Japan version with a white ring, there made in Japan ones are the rebrands 2nd gen eneloops.
 
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