May 15th, 2012
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. All I can say is that for the last few years I have been talking with battery charger manufacturers about the need for a higher capacity 9V Battery charger that could handle multiple chemistries – both NiMH and Li-Ion rechargeable batteries.
Finally somebody listened. The Tenergy Corp has just introduced an inexpensive, 6-bay 9V battery charger that will handle both NiMH and Li-Ion cells. We had the opportunity to perform a “hands-on” product review of the Tenergy TN346 battery charger and see how it stood up to the charging of Ansmann NiMH 9V cells as well as HiTech and Tenergy Li-Ion Cells. Take a few minutes to watch the product review.
We found the charger to perform well with both chemistries. The Ansmann NiMh’s charged up to capacity on the first charge. Both the HiTech and Tenergy Li-Ion’s required 2 or 3 intial charge cycles to bring them up to full capacity. (This is typical of new batteries, particularly Li-Ion chemistry)
As to the batteries, the “new kid on the block” the Tenergy li-Ion 9V, (rated at 500 mah,) we found the true capacity to be closer to 350 mah (it’s stated minimum capacity.)
The best feature of the this new charger is when you have different devices that require a variety of run-times. You can opt for the higher capacity 9V’s in Li-Ion and still use it to charge the NiMH cells of lower capacity.
An example of this would be wireless mics or in-ear monitors. Suppose you have a few units that are real power hungry and require runtimes in excess of 4 hours. You could use a Li-Ion battery and get up to 15 hours and still use the NiMH cells for your shorter run time devices. NiMH have higher recycles value than Li-Ions so you can still get the most mileage from them and use the high capacity Li-ions for your longer run-times – without the need for separate chargers — and the possibility of charging the wrong cells in the wrong charger.