Tenergy TN160 12-Bay Smart Battery Charger for AA/AAA NiMH/NiCd Rechargeable Batteries with Refresh Function

I bought this mainly for the charger, but getting the batteries with it was a bonus. Prior to this, I had an ancient battery charger that required you to charge batteries in pairs and had no “smart” intelligence to it. I purchased the 12 bay charger, which has been really helpful as I spent time going through the dozens of older batteries (AA and AAA) that I’ve had. I’ve been able to quickly figure out which older rechargeable batteries were ready to be taken out of use and recycled. Before this, it was really hard to tell when a rechargeable battery had hit end of life. With this charger, if I ran into a battery that either didn’t show any symbol on the display for that slot/bay or just showed an empty battery icon with no image of charging or discharging, I knew it was time to get rid of that battery. Since I could charge 12 at a time, it made the process go much faster to sort through all of my old batteries. I love the ability to do a discharge/refresh since many of my batteries have been around for a while, and this allowed them to kind of refresh to hopefully extend their life. It discharges it down to empty and then recharges them back up to “full” capacity without me having to manually switch the charge direction. I haven’t had it long enough to be able to rate or comment on the batteries themselves, but I love the battery charger. The LED display is a nice and bright and then will turn itself off when the charge or discharge/refresh is complete. I believe it has an eight hour timer, although I’m not usually watching it when it finishes. Since I got the 12 Bay charger and the batteries for just under $40, I feel it was great value from my money.

One battery charger has proved to be inadequate in this house with more and more device's being battery powered. The original one [ black ] was purchased eleven years ago and works perfectly. Many batteries have been charged the claimed 1200 cycles of life and only the charger remains. The new one [ white ] is expected to follow the same path, that is, in use every day. I will now have the convenience of two locations having chargers, a good thing here. I purchased the Tenergy because I believe the value for my money will not be a disappointment. I expect a long life from it and the bonus was the included batteries. We needed them too!

Note: Charger was used with AmazonBasics AA NiMH Precharged Rechargeable Batteries-8-Pack, 2000 mAh I purchased this product because my battery costs were out of control in supplying 4 Nikon Speedlights with AA battery power, easily exceeding $30 a month. After much research, I narrowed my selection down to this product and the 16 Slot Titanium AAAAA Fast Battery Charger with LCD Display . However, the latter was out of stock when I went to purchase and thus defaulted to my #2 selection, the Tenergy. The charger comes packaged in a blister pack that has to be cut away. That is the only fault I can find with this charger. The charger is very well built with decent weight to it. Both build quality and materials are very good. Instructions are a little on the light side, but no big deal. The design is simple, which is a major selling point to me. Being able to charge 12 batteries makes my life easier (the Titanium charger can do 16). The charger can easily be transported onsite and will fit in most camera bags and easily into luggage. Despite the 12 battery design, it does not take up much space. I immediately loaded up the charger with 12 AmazonBasics AA NiMH Precharged Rechargeable Batteries-8-Pack, 2000 mAh . The charger took about 3 seconds to read each battery and display current state status. It then began charging them simultaneously, taking about 4 hours to bring them all up to full charge. Batteries that were in process of being charged became a little warm (in no way hot) during charge cycle. Once fully charged, I could not detect any heat and the charged batteries were cold to the touch even though they continued to receive a trickle charge to maintain the charged state. The display continuously displays battery status. The digital display is very bright (blue), but easy to read. Charge time rates from package: 700mAh AAA 1.8 hours 900mAh AAA 2.3 hours 1500mAh AA 3.9 hours 1600mAh AA 4.2 hours 1800mAh AA 4.6 hours 2000mAh AA 5.2 hours 2300mAh AA 6.0 hours In summation, I am very impressed with this product, especially at the price. I was prepared to spend twice the amount. Apparently, I did not need to. As a side note, I ordered another charger. TIP: I recommend you number or letter your batteries in groups if using them in pairs, especially for photographers using flash. This will allow better battery management and pairing. Also, the batteries should arrive at end of life cycle more or less at the same time- avoiding mixing new batteries and old.

This is a technically remarkable item, but with a few slight annoyances. As some other reviewers have noted, the cell bays are somewhat close together, making extraction of finished cells somewhat difficult. All you really need though is a small flat screwdriver (or similar), or I suppose a long enough fingernail, to pry on the positive end of cell being extracted. The display is compact, probably to save money; it would be more convenient to have the indicators directly above the bay it represents. Instead, there are numbers on the display and on one end of each bay. Because the numbers are only molded into the (white) plastic, there is very little contrast to be able to read them. It's easy to rectify by oneself; take a marker and carefully blacken the tops of the molded numbers. I would also prefer to add more segments to the display to make reading it easier, but again, it was probably designed this way to make it less expensive. While a cell is charging, segments (three per bay) are darkened in succession. They're supposed to represent charging 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 complete. All the 1/3's in all active bays are darkened simultaneously, as are the 2/3, then 3/3, cluminating with the charge being complete with all thirds remaining dark. When a cell is 1/3 done, the 1/3 segment stays dark, when 2/3 done, both the 1/3 and 2/3 segments stay dark. So in order to assess the completeness of charge, for anything which is not complete, you cannot glance at the display, you must pay attention to it for a few seconds, because you could have looked at it with all segments dark, but you won't know if it's done until you see if the animation starts. I would prefer the thirds to stay dark to indicate completeness and have some other set of segments animate to show "charging" on that bay. This is also complicated on cell insertion because the microprocessor for some reason takes some time to assess current state of charge. It will start the animation as if it's discharged below 1/3, but then several seconds later, it will keep the segments dark depending on initial charge. The 3-D geometry makes inserting AA cells slightly challenging because of the AAA bay right beneath it. Sometimes when pressing on the positive end, the cell will catch on the edge of the AAA bay, which is tactilely somewhat difficult to distinguish from pressing against the firm springiness of the AA negative terminal. As far as I know, it's not possible to be draining some cells (for the "refresh" function) while charging others. All bays do the same thing (drain or charge) simultaneously. It seems a little "authoritarian" to refuse to charge some cells. I know this indicates the microcontroller thinks the cell is weak, but generally, as many suggest to try, if one puts that cell in another, not-so-smart charger for some period of time, then puts it in this charger, it will charge the cell. Hopefully there would be some other way to indicate the cell is weak, but still attempt to charge it instead of giving up so easily. It seems like taking away my choice whether or not to continue to use marginal cells. After charging in this charger, anecdotally, the cells seem to have a longer run time by maybe 10% comared to being charged in other chargers, so its algorithm would appear to be better than average. (I honestly don't have the patience to do rigorous tests.) I also like that the cells will continue to be trickle charged once they're done.

First, I purchased this charger almost a year ago, which came with 12 AA Tenergy batteries. I added 12 AAA Tenergy batteries. I've been very pleased with how it works. The batteries charge reasonably fast, even if you are charging all 12 at the same time. I was a little surprised that the directions recommend taking out the batteries after they are finished charging. So, this charger does not do a trickle charge like some other, much more expensive chargers, do. I use the batteries in a lot of items around the house and I feel their longevity in those items is very good! I do like having a refresh button, although this function takes quite awhile to discharge and then recharge the batteries. I recently found that one of the islots was defective. I contacted Tenergy and after being asked some questions for clarification of the defect, Tenergy's customer service sent me a replacement charger priority mail without hesitation. I can definitely recommend the charger and their batteries. I would like to see a charger available from Tenergy that also has a slot for recharging at least one 9 volt battery, which they do sell, and I have used in the past in my sprinkler system control box (which provides a trickle charge).

Da GOOD. It can charge TWELVE batteries at once. It can DISCHARGE and/or CONDITION ALL TWELVE batteries at once. Has a good bright clear display that shows charging progress. Is FULLY AUTOMATIC SHUT OFF when all batteries are fully charged, then switches to trickle, at least I think it does. Display light goes out and let's you know your batteries are charged. Then it will (periodically light up), for a few seconds, then light will go back out. This is to (signal you/ get your attention) to notice it, to let you know your batteries are fully charged and ready. Da BAD. It's supposed to be a SMART charger, but it is NOT SO SMART in my observation. WHY do I say that? While it appears to know EVERY SINGLE BATTERY's CURRENT charge status, IT WILL STILL CHARGE/ continue to charge for a FULL SIX HOURS. So EVERY TIME you charge your batteries, EVEN IF YOU KNOW they are CHARGED already, and you are ONLY TOPPING THEM OFF, this so called SMART charger will CHARGE your batteries for a FULL SIX HOURS ANYWAY. So to me, I say this charger is NOT VERY SMART. It may be automatic, and have a detailed display, and I REALLY DO LIKE the DISCHARGE feature, know that it's always gonna be a SIX HOUR CHARGER. Six hours is not that bad, but IT SHOULD AT LEAST CHARGE THEM IN FOUR hours, and NOT SIX. Maybe it's a bug in da system. May it's a glitch. This charger is NOT very SMART TO ME. Still, it's 12 battery capacity, and ability to DISCHARGE/CONDITION your batteries is good enough for me. I am VERY DISAPPOINTED that IT'S NOT VERY SMART tho. It's still a good useful charger nonetheless.

With a charge cap of 500 mA, you won't charge the batteries too fast which is good for battery health. Each slot stops independently when a battery is finished. Discharge mode is handy as well. We use them with NiMH for over a year and it's doing what we need.

Damaged the last one by re-charging alkalines in it (please don't)--one leaked so badly, ate the negative terminal off that charge cell. Replacement working like a champ.