Energizer Family Battery Charger

DROP BATTERIES IN THE CHARGER CLOSE THE LID & CHARGER AUTOMATICALLY BEGINS CONTACTS AUTO-ADJUST LCD ENABLES USERS TO SEE CHARGE STATUS AUTO SHUT-OFF FEATURE ABILITY TO CHARGE 8 AA OR 8 AAA AS WELL AS 4 C & 4 D BATTERIES

Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
I bought this battery charger because I wanted one that can handle size D batteries, also one that can charge 8 AA batteries at a time. Also, this charger has a LCD readout which shows the charge progress of each battery which is a nice touch. A unique feature of this charger is that the batteries don't start charging until the lid is closed. That is how the contacts are made on the positive/negative areas of the batteries. This feature is both good and bad. It is good as a safety measure (I assume, since it's called a family charger, the audience includes children). Yet, because the contacts aren't spring loaded, with AA and AAA batteries, sometimes after closing the lid, the contacts don't seem to touch properly (more on this later) and I found that I had to shuffle the batteries around and get them to work by trial and error. When charging AA or AAA batteries, one can choose to charge up to 8 batteries at at time. This is possible because the contact point which touches the base of the battery has three possible contact areas in each of four chambers. The middle for charging only one battery, or the two edges for charging two in a chamber. Unfortunately, when using the outer contacts, the contacts don't always touch properly and because of that, the shuffling of batteries is required. (The shuffling isn't required when using the middle contact point). In otherwords, one can flawlessly charge 4 batteries using only the middle contact points. However, attempting to charge more than one battery in a chamber may require shuffling the batteries to get the charger to work right. What I like: - charges sizes besides AAA and AA - charges up to 8 AAA and AA batteries at a time - LCD display showing individual battery status What I dislike: - AA and AAA batteries needed some reshuffling to get it to charge - hibernate feature doesn't seem to work. After the charge is done, if left idle the charger hibernates. However I've had the batteries hibernate in the charger for several weeks, but when testing them, some already seem discharging. Overall, a nice charger, if you understand the limitations. The battery charger recharges batteries well, but charging more than four AA/AAA batteries at a time requires some fiddling around.