There are only a handful of gadgets in my possession that can’t be charged over USB: TV/Cable/Blu-ray player remotes and my DSLR. My Xbox 360 controller was a battery hog once upon a time, but the Nyko Charge Base took care of that. The remotes aren’t as taxing on batteries as my SLR — that puppy is constantly draining my supply of batteries. I could always cut back on the amount of photos I take, but life wouldn’t be as much fun and I’m all about fun.
Trying to be as eco-friendly as possible, I decided to embrace rechargeable batteries and went with Energizer’s 2500mAh rechargeables. Because my camera drains the juice so quickly when using the flash in my dark apartment, I also opted to pick up the 15-minute AA/AAA Battery Charger. It holds up to four batteries and glows red when depleted batteries are docked. A fan swirls for the next 15-20 minutes and subsequently shuts down when the status indicator goes green. Energizer claims to recharge batteries up to 90 percent in 15 minutes. They also suggest you keep them in for an additional 10 minutes once the intitial 15 minutes is up for maximum results.
Now the way I chose to test whether or not the batteries were charged was to plug them into my Xbox 360 controller and check the battery meter in dashboard. I played for an hour or two and checked again and it was still going strong. Obviously, I tested with my SLR under similar conditions and results were mixed. I believe this is due to the changing amount of light that seeps into my apartment, subject placement, and other circumstances. They all averaged out in an acceptable window of use, though.
Safety precautions abound in this charger, with bad battery detecion, short circuit protection, overcharge protection, and surge protection, among many others. So don’t worry about burning down your house or zapping the rechargeable batteries you do have.
The kit comes with 2 AA and 2 AAA batteries along with a car-charging adapter. It can be found for as low as $32. Picking one of these up will save you money in the long run despite the rather high intitial investment.
I love these batteries. I have about a dozen of them for my X360 controllers, guitars, remotes and my wireless mouse.
I have been using this charger for a couple of years. Works like a champ. I have recently switched to Duracell Rechargeable batteries and am having much better luck than the Energizer brand. Engergizer brand seemed to fail to take a charge in a number of cases. Duracell with the light green Rechargeable label are working great.
Yeah same as murph, I have one of these. Its freakin fantastic. Just keep a drawer full of AA’s instead of always buying new ones. All 360 controllers and Wiimotes are fully satisfied.
Well I must have 50 AA Energizer batteries that need to be recharged from time to time. I find that most are new and don’t accept a charge from any number of Genuine Energizer chargers including the 15minute one. It just sits there playing dumb and blinking red light. (Normally solid Red when charging). So is this a defect with the charger or battery? Even a new batter makes it just sit there and blink…hmmm I try several other batteries until I get 4 that the charger likes and does charge them to full charge in like 25 minutes. Still better than other chargers that take overnight. Just wish I could understand the Blinking Red light.
Steelman
Steelman,
I have the same problem. It drives me insane. And the worst part is that I don’t know why some batteries cause the blinking red light and others do not. I bought new re-chargeables because I thought the old ones just wouldn’t take a charge anymore. But the news ones did the same as the old! A few months ago I went back to buying regular batteries… out of frustration!
If anybody knows how to “fix” the blinking red light issue, please let us know!
Hi there
Ive been experimenting with batteries lately and found the energizer batterys if not used for a month or less just loose all drain of power compared to these vvpow and philips batteries ive been using and they are only 1800 mah
I have had the problem with the blinking red light and found a way to recharge them. I have a stock standard sony cd walkman, i put the batteries in that and use the power supply to give a little charge to the batteries, then put them back in the charger and they work perfectly fine.
When depleted i recharge and they charge as normal again
Hope that helps people out there