Tronic LC-Display IAN313693 HG04710A





This charger is a AA/AAA charger and USB charger from LIDL (Tronic is a LIDL brand).



I got the charger in a blister pack. The pack has a very few specifications on it, mostly that it takes about 6½ hour to charge 2400mAh cells.



The pack contained the charger, a instruction book in many languages and four 2400mAh Tronic batteries.



The instruction book may be in many languages, but it is not superficial.



The charger is designed for directly plugging into a mains outlet.



The user interface is a LCD display, there is no settings or anything.



Display when powering on. The display must be seen fairly straight on to get the correct readout.



Charging four batteries, the battery symbols are animated.



The usb output is placed on the side.



Specifications are listed on the bottom of the charger.




The slots are the typical two level slots often used for AA/AAA batteries.







Measurements charger

• When not powered it will discharge the battery with about 0.6mA
• Charge will restart charging after power loss, or battery insertion.
• Power consumption when idle is 0.25 watt

Manual specifies charge current as 450mA and that looks correct enough. The charger reduces the current slightly when nearing the end of a charge and then terminates on voltage. Finally a 1 hour 50mA top-off charge is used.





The other slots looks similar.





it looks like all the high capacity cells are terminated slightly early and at a lower voltage.



With AAA the current is lower, manual says 200mA and that looks correct.



A full cell takes some time to detect and it gets the one hour top-off charge. At 50mA this is not a problem.



Four cells is charged the same way as one cell.



M1: 40.0°C, M2: 41.1°C, M3: 40.9°C, M4: 37.6°C, M5: 42.8°C, HS1: 46.1°C


M1: 39.9°C, HS1: 46.0°C



The charger starts in a few seconds and use pulses when charging as basically all NiMH charger does.




USB output

• Display do not indicate when USB output is used.
• Usb output is coded Apple 1A

The USB output is rated for 1A, but can easily deliver more. This is not enough current to be an issue.



At 120VAC the output is similar.



Charging batteries at the same time as using the USB output is possible, it do limit the maximum current some, but it can still deliver the rated 1A.
Efficiency will go down, because a lot of energy is used for charging.



Again 120VAC is similar.



Rated 1A output for one hour is no problem.
The temperature photos below are taken between 30 minutes and 60 minutes into the one hour test.



M1: 36.0°C, HS1: 36.5°C



HS1: 40.7°C



HS1: 37.9°C



HS1: 38.5°C



Noise is 19mV rms and 710mVpp



Noise is 19mV rms and 670mVpp, this is nice low values.


Testing the charger with 2830 volt and 4242 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.




Conclusion

As a NiMH charger it works fine, but I could have wished for a bit more charge into high capacity cells.
The USB output uses a old coding, this probably means many modern phones will charge rather slow from it.



Notes

The charger was supplied by a reader for review.
The batteries is reviewed here

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