NZcaver wrote:Curious - what batteries are they, and what headlamps/devices have you been using them in? No noticeable decline in battery life? With my old dumb chargers, I still got years of life out of older low-capacity non-LSD Rayovac NiMHs and yet managed to kill my Energizer 2600mAH NiMHs in a year or less. Not sure whether to blame that more on the charger or the batteries. But if I'd used a smart charger back then, I would have been able to analyze the battery capacity and know exactly how healthy my cells were.
I've been using Energizer 2450mAH rechargables. I really only use them in my headlamps, but they still seem to work nearly as well as when I got them. They don't provide the same battery life as non-rechargables, but they work okay. The one complaint I have is that they don't hold their charge very well; once charged, they won't stay charged for more than a few weeks without losing power. Of course, they have been doing that since I got them. The charger is definitely "dumb." It also takes about 24 hours to charge a set of four batteries. I have thought about getting a better/faster one--it seems from other folks comments that there are a few options. I'm curious to try eneloop batteries as well and compare them to the ones I'm using now.