Customer Reviews

LENMAR PRO-541 5-In-1 AC Battery Charger

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want a quick charger for your rechargable batteries, look elsewhere. But if you want a good, sturdy charger that holds the batteries in place and charges them up, this will do the job. With my quick charger the batteries sometimes have to be placed "just so" in order for them to make the right contact. This is a more robust design that holds them firmly in place. It takes 12-18 hours to charge the batteries.

Be sure to unplug it after you're done or else when you put in a new set of batteries it won't work. You'll have to unplug it for about a minute or less then it'll work when you plug it back in. Don't ask me why, but that's the way mine works.

Used this charger at a friend's house and had to buy one for myself. I have the small Maha quick chargers and they charge so fast, they burn up my batteries. Those fast chargers really shorten the life of good batteries. The slower chargers are much kinder to batteries. I compensate for the longer charge times by having more batteries on-hand. This charger goes into trickle mode after the batteries are full, so I don't have to worry about overcharging. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is the plug/unplug step to reset the unit when putting in batteries. You would think you could have a auto-sense circuit with all the electronics these days.

I like this charger because it will charge a variety of cells. I believe a slow charge is more cell friendly than a fast charge. With this in mind, I have spare cells and begin charging as the cells being used begin drawing down.

The only draw-back is the plug-unplug prior to charging. Lenmar should have done what I did. Install an in-line on/off switch eliminating the need to plug-unplug prior to charging.

I recommend this charger.

This is the older type battery charger for NiCad and NiMh (Nickel Metal Hydride) batteries. It charges simply based on time and that is why it is so inexpensive.

It is also limited in maximum battery capacity that it can charge. It lists that it can charge up to a 2000MAH battery and it will take up 8 hours to charge it. I have some D cells that are 10,000MAH and not chargeable with this Lenmar Charger. However, the majority of my NiMh batteries are AAA and AA with 1000 MAH max capacity and this Lenmar charger charges them with no problem.

It can charge either 1 or up to 4 batteries simultaneously. I had one charger that required at least 2 batteries at a time to charge, it would not charge a single battery and that is one thing I like about this Lenmar charger, it can charge a single battery.
The other big advantage to this Lenmar battery charger over the newer computer controlled battery chargers is that it doesn't care what condition the batteries are in. It will still charge them. I also have a Tenergy 9688 charger and it will not charge older NiMh batteries. The Tenergy reports many of the batteries as "bad" yet they are completely usable.

If you are buying the newer high capacity NiMh batteries then I do not recommend this charger. A computerized charger like the Tenergy 9688 will be faster and more accurate. However, if you already have a lot of NiMh batteries then this charger is probably a better choice as it won't mistakenly detect the batteries as bad or unusable when in fact they are still good.

My Fault! I should have done my homework a little better. The Battery Charger works good but is much too slow. I bought it because I had the idea of using it for D cells. But it would take 16 hours to charge D cells. Even the smaller AA or AAA takes 8 hours. Does the job but much too slow.