La Crosse Technology PC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger Reviewed (Verdict: Still Awesome)

Jeff "Coding Horror" Atwood beams about his La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower battery charger, which as chance would have it is the exact same battery charger I purchased a couple of months back at all y'all's suggestion, but haven't actually yet had a chance to use, as my AA usage mysteriously has dropped to next to nothing.

You can also switch between four different readouts after the mode is engaged: time elapsed, voltage, and two mAh (I assume one is charge/discharge rate, not sure what the other one is). That refresh mode is incredibly slow-- it's basically discharging and recharging over and over-- but it really works. It can take marginal batteries from the brink of death and give them new life. But you don't have to care about any of that; if you just drop 4 AAs or AAA batteries in the device, it will charge them fine. I spent several hours after I got it plugging various batteries in it, trying different modes, and watching it work. I'm not sure what the exact definition of geek is, but I think "enjoys recharging batteries" has to be very high on that list.

Adventures in Rechargeable Batteries [Coding Horror]

[#1 posted by kfractal , March 20, 2008 10:47 AM]

yep yep... worth every penny. on advice from a friend i picked one of these up and it works beautifully.

[#2 posted by BdgBill , March 20, 2008 4:00 PM]

Good post.

The cheap "Energizer" chargers that Best Buy and Wal-Mart sell are JUNK. I used to throw away my rechargeables once the cheap chargers refused to charge them anymore.

I bought a similar charger to yours made by NexxTech and it's awesome. It happily charged batteries that had been lying around for over a year. I have not thrown away a rechargeable battery since I bought this charger.

[#3 posted by Porco Rosso , March 21, 2008 6:25 AM]

The only issue I've had with the charger is that it's protection circuit sometimes refuses to charge a cell that's been depleted. I think this is a safety feature thats there to detect cells that have developed shorts.

Sometimes its useful to have a dumb charger around to charge a battery enough so that the lacross will recognize it.

[#4 posted by s3pu1chr4v3 , March 23, 2008 10:44 AM]

I must have one of these!!!

Does anyone know where to get on of them in the Greater Toronto Area?

[#5 posted by acb , March 23, 2008 4:50 PM]

Do they sell these in any bricks-and-mortar shops in the Bay Area?

[#6 posted by Anonymous , April 17, 2008 1:45 PM]

Too funny, I was just thinking about picking up a charger and remembered your old post where you were trying to find a good one. Thanks for bringing this up again.

Somehow I'm still torn between the BC-900 and one of the higher end Maha PowerEx chargers.

However, can someone make recommendations on rechargeable batteries? On the Maha website they are advertising Imedion batteries which allegedly retain 85% of charge after 1 year of storage. Talk about slow self-drain!

I'd be curious to try those, otherwise I'll probably go with the Sanyo Eneloop ones.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , April 17, 2008 2:10 PM]

Alright now I feel retarded and want to add to my previous comment about Maha chargers and Imedion ultra low self-discharge batteries:

After doing some more reading I realized that the Eneloop are also ultra-low self-discharge batteries and feature the same 1 year 85% charge promise as the Imedion batteries.

Also, Thomas Distributing has the BC-900 on sale right now for $38, so I'm definitely going with that one now.