Charger Energizer Rapid charger CH1HR-2





Energizer has a line of NiMH chargers, this one is intelligent and fast.




I got the charger in a blister pack.



The pack included: The charger, external power supply, car adapter, 4 2450mAh energizer cells and an instruction sheet in many languages.



The charger needs an external 12 volt supply and with the marking (12-16V) it shows clearly that it can work from a 12V car battery. It is rated for 1.3A input current.



This charger also has a green led for each battery, it will show a steady green light when charging and will turn off when the batteries are full.



The charger uses the usual two level slots and has a little space between each cell for better cooling.



Below the batteries there is some air intake holes to get more airflow.







Measurements charger

• The charger has four separate channels.
• Charge current is specified as 2.5A
• Will discharge a full battery with less than 0.02mA
• Will charge from 0 volt.

With this fast charger it is important that the charger stops when the battery is full and it looks like it do that.





Same with the other channels, the battery just starts to heat up and the charger stops.





The higher capacity batteries are also charged perfectly.



With AAA the current is lower and the temperature raise when the battery is full is barely visible.



The charger is fast at detecting a full cell, that is also best with for this type of high speed charger.
It looks like it uses a trickle current in this case.



Lets return to the one cell charging, but log for much longer time. The charger do a very fine charge, then rest for some time, before doing another charge and switching a rather high trickle charge on (About 50mA).



It maintains full charger current with 4 cells and it do get fairly warm.



At 12V it uses about 1500mA (The supplied supply is 16V 1300mA and I do expect that to be fine). This time I did also record long enough to get the extra charging cycle.



M1: 48,0°C, M2: 53,4°C, M3: 52,1°C, M4: 47,4°C, M5: 47,5°C, M6: 46,8°C, M7: 44,8°C, M8: 36,7°C, HS1: 59,1°C
Especially the two center cells get warm.



M1: 46,3°C, M2: 51,3°C, M3: 49,8°C, M4: 45,7°C, M5: 53,7°C, M6: 45,6°C, HS1: 54,8°C



The charger needs about one second to initialize and start charging. A usual the voltage is measured with current off.



Testing the mains transformer with 2500 volt and 5000 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.



Conclusion

The charge current with this charge is at or a bit above the maximum recommended charge current for normal NiMH cells, this may wear the cells down slightly faster, but is great if you need the batteries fast. I will recommend getting the batteries out of the charger when it is done and avoid the extra charge cycle and trickle charge (It will probably only do that sometimes). The termination on the charger looks very good.

For people that need their batteries charged fast, this looks like a good charger, but I would not use it for overnight charging.



Notes

Here is an explanation on how I did the above charge curves: How do I test a charger