TN438 16 Bay Battery Charger for AAA and AA Rechargeable Batteries, AA/AAA NiMH/NiCd Rechargeable Batteries Charger with AC Wall Adapter and Car Adapter

This battery charger is the best one I've ever purchased. It came with the charger, an AC wall plug, and a DC car plug. I have only two issues with this charger, and both are not with the charger itself. PROS: - The charger ACCURATELY charges a very large variety of batteries (speaking strictly of mAhs) simultaneously. - The display is very easy to read. - As the specifications show, it does charge each battery independently. - The discharge functionality of this charger helps maintain battery life and provides a clean charge. CONS: - The charger itself has no real cons. - The manual provided, in short, sucks. Nothing in this product tells you how to switch from CHARGING to DISCHARGING, and visa versa. Nothing in this product or manual tells you how to turn on the LCD back-light. The words on the display of this charger which conveys the state of the charging process are truncated versions of the words, CHARGE, DISCHARGE, and ERROR. I know it sounds somewhat dumb, but there are a lot of people who will not understand what ERR means. In fact, the word ERROR in itself is ambiguous enough. - Before purchasing this product, I spent a few hours hunting down the same brand but with a 9V battery charging slot. While this brand did have a few, it was with the sacrifice of a large number of AA/AAA charging slots. Additionally searching outside of this brand was of a different make and model where the specifications of such did not clarify what I was looking for, or I needed to accept a substantial downsize with a substantial increase of cost. As great of a product as this is, I did not like having to settle for this product. Over all, I love this product. It works GREAT with Tenergy Premium & Energizer batteries. I would definitely recommend this product, or even a smaller version of it to friends and family.

This charger works great and is very easy to use. It's almost foolproof if there's such a thing. We love that we don't have to buy new batteries all the time and throw old ones away. The convenience of it would be enough, but we're also saving money and trashing fewer batteries. We're happy.

Review of the 16 bay Tenergy charger. MY NEW FAVORITE HIGH VOLUME CHARGER. First of all I have probably bought nearly every decent charger over many years and this one is my new favorite. I also have the 12 bay version from years ago (still being sold) and that one was a little too finicky about being too sensitive to very low voltage / depleted batteries not being recognized (which required instilling a minimum charge using an old basic “non-smart” charger that doesn’t analyze minimum voltage) . NOT this one … it is pretty much near perfect compared to many others offering volume charging bays like this one. For example I had over 60 new AA & AAAs batteries still in their original package for several years I had forgotten about in some misplaced box that certainly were well depleted by now and decided I better open them and instill a charge using this new charger. Everyone battery except 1 was recognized and charged them all. NOTE this has “REFRESH” capability to discharge then recharge (optimize capacity & longevity), many high volume chargers do NOT have this feature. This charger is great if you have a lot of batteries and you need to simply keep them charged every few months just to keep them from getting too self-discharged, or if you have a smaller number of batteries where you can charge them all in one shot instead of swapping them out every several hours as with typical 4-bay chargers. I have many chargers from all sorts of manufacturers and many seem to stop charging too early, not fully topping them off or don’t have a discharge/recharge option. I also love the LaCrosse & PowerEx 4-bay chargers that offer a lot of charging control and are great for a small number of problem batteries that needs better attention to recovery. But with only 4 bays, it’s not practical if you have many that need charging. Those are best for intensive care purposes. But for volume charging - this one is the best I’ve come across. If you looking to a volume charger, don’t buy one without the Refresh or Discharge/Recharge option. This is the best in class for high volume chargers.

works as expected.

Keeps my AA and AAA batteries charged and ready. Charge time seems much better than the older Tenergy charger this replaced.

So much better than my old 4 bay chargers. I have to wait and see on durability, but out of the box it great at charging multiple batteries and identifying bad batteries.

I've been through a few of the 4 battery "advanced smart" Panasonic brand chargers... the ones that come with the enloop batteries. I always was a little dissspointed at enloop batteries because they seemed to degrade faster than they should . I had purchased a megapack of batteries in 2008, 2012, and 2018... all of which ended in a shoebox because they'd never get back above 1.2v after a year or two of use. Then I found this beast of a smart charger... after just one charge>discharge>charge cycle, even my oldest batteries are back to 100% @1.5v... and they perform even better than they did new. Now, I just bought it so I don't know if the agressive charging will shorten the lifespan of the batteries eventually.... but I wasn't using them anyway, so I consider it a major win to be able to start using my rechargable batteries again, AND not have to dedicate a day to charging / conditioning all 50 of them 4 at a time. This is a must-have for any bug-out gear-bag and major bonus.. comes wuth a 12v automotive power suply, so batch charging batteries on camping trips or road trips is easy-peasy.

This is only an okay charger. It is a fairly intelligent charger that does a good job of gently charging 1 to 16 AA or AAA batteries individually. The knocks some people gave for having to fumble with installing AA batteries seemed unfounded to me. I had no trouble installing any batteries; you just have to push AA's in firmly until you hear them snap into place. Installing AAA's is a little easier but both install easily enough for me. And the individual status on each battery is nice and being able to charge up to 16 batteries at a time is pretty good. So overall it works well and no serious complaints. Now for what's not optimal and why it doesn't get 5 stars. First, you want to charge batteries, not bake them. Heat shortens the useful life of a battery. They had the right idea of 500 ma for AA batteries and 250 ma for AAA batteries because you want to charge as quickly as possible without heating up the battery. I would have chosen those rates to start with myself, but then I would have lowered the AA charge rate to 400 ma because this charger generates just a tad too much heat for my liking with AA batteries. The AAA's at a 250 ma rate don't get hot at all and there's a good reason. Look up the dimensions of these batteries and you will find that AAAs have 67% the surface area of AA's. But they charge the AAAs at 50% the current (250 ma) of a AA battery. That explains why the AAAs stay cool and the AAs get a little warm. It's not excessively hot but it's warmer that you expect from an "intelligent" charger. Okay, they have thermal protection to prevent your battery from getting fried, but I don't want to mildly bake my batteries either. The other ding against this charger is that it says to remove the batteries after charging. (BTW: The directions are rather skimpy.) What the heck? Remove it from the charger immediately??? I thought intelligent chargers were smart enough to shift to a trickle charge so that I could leave a whole bank of batteries plugged in there forever so that I can grab a fully charged battery whenever I want. Such a simple capability would make this a much more useful charger. But apparently it shuts off all charging after a battery has been charged and that's that. No mention of a trickle charge anywhere. But they do tell you to remove them after they are charged. I'm a little spoiled by the outstanding LaCrosse and PowerEx chargers that give you control over all aspects of charging a battery. Heck, they can be used as laboratory instruments. The opposite end of the spectrum is the dumb fast chargers that are sometimes included when you buy rechargeable batteries. Those things are horrible. This Tenergy charger comes close to being in the middle and does a good job at things. They just barely missed by not charging at 400 ma for AAs and also having a trickle charge capability. I almost forgot to give them partial credit for having the discharge and charge refresh capability. That's a nice feature and it seems to work well, so a little extra credit to them for that. Many people don't realize how useful that discharge\refresh capability is. I've seen people comment on how their batteries get discharged from being used, so what's the point of having a discharge capability? Well, it's almost impossible to fully discharge a battery in most devices. Semiconductor based devices like cameras, LED flashlights, and any other electronics will stop drawing current from the battery after the voltage drops below a certain level. But there could be 10% or 15% of power left in the battery. Same thing happens with motorized devices. As soon as it slows down and becomes sluggish, you remove the batteries rather than letting them get fully drained. So this refresh capability is quite useful exercising batteries to get their full potential. Discharging and charging can get you maybe an extra 10% or more capacity because you are able to charge more deeply. Don't believe it? Get those 2 fancy chargers I mentioned, run extensive tests on multiple brands of batteries like I have done and then you will be a believer. Bottom line, this is a good charger that could have been excellent. It is suitable for many people. I'm not going to return mine, I'm going to use it. I just could have been a little happier, that's all.