Energizer Accu Universal Battery Charger

The Energizer Accu Universal battery charger is a domestic use charger. It takes up to four NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries. It automatically recognizes the charge required for the battery type and stops charging when full. The unit is the size of a small radio and looks a little like one. It will come with a transformer with a standard 3 pin plug.

The door on the front easily opens up with hinges on the left side and the open button to the right. It springs open more with more than enough space to engage the batteries. There are four battery charging bays which have spring loaded metal clips at the bottom. They easily slide down when you insert the batteries. It takes sets of two batteries at a time when using either AA or AAA , C or D types whilst a 9v battery can be engaged singly. There is a small green backlit LCD display resides above the door. This indicates the status of charge. It gives images of four batteries and during the stages of a charge it will flash up each battery and the words "charging," "full," or "bad." Charging times vary depending on a battery's mAh rating. The leaflet inside advised a AAA battery with between 850-1000 mAh will take between two and three hours go charge, whilst a AA battery of 2500-2650 mAh may take up to five hours to charge. Which is impressive if you ever had to use NiCd (nickel-cadmium) batteries then they would have to charge quite a bit longer.

The packaging for this product is simple, just one of those moulded covers you need scissors to remove. Perhaps for this the instructions were negligible. They are basic with of one or two sentences, in about 25 different languages. I wanted to know more about NiMH batteries and how the charger works. Only from searching on the internet do I now partly understand what a battery's mAh rating means. The higher a mAh rating the more capacity for holding a charge and also the longer the battery will last and the longer it will take to charge. Due to having to find information from the internet about this charger I can not ay for sure whether the features other web sites say this device actually has it does. This is a sad state of affairs. If it does have a safeguard for incorrect insertion of batteries then this is the kind of essential information I would of thought a manufacturer had to put on the instructions. So I wonder if there is a legal obligation, but like anything else manufacturers are dumbing down such details for the mass market where a consumer just goes out there purchases a product and instantly wants to use it without any understanding of its specifications.

I'm not entirely sure whether the Energizer charger I bought is functioning correctly. When placing batteries in it for a charge the LCD display will flash up with all three words "charging" "full" "bad." The battery images will scroll through the various stages of charging until they are blocked with three black lines to indicate full. However, once charging has finished and there is no more intermittent flashing the charger holds the word "bad" above the last battery symbol on the right. Now, I've alternated 3 sets of four batteries and this happens every time. So whether it is faulty or the design of the charger I just haven't the foggiest idea.

For simplicity of use anyone normal functioning person would have no problem. For poor literature I'm knocking off a star rating so will only give this three out of five.