Digital Home Thoughts: LaCrosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger

The Problem With Rechargeable Batteries
If you are like me, you have tons of items in your household that rely on AA and AAA batteries rather than built in battery packs. Personally, I prefer using standard batteries over proprietary battery packs simply because of the replacement cost when these packs eventually die. Plus standard batteries are available everywhere. The downside of standard batteries is that they are disposable which can get costly as well as not being the best for the environment. I'm sure many of you, like me have gone for the best of both worlds by using rechargeable batteries in standard sizes. There are still a few downsides to this strategy. I've found that most rechargeable batteries don't hold their charge for a long time, so a charged battery that has been sitting for a few months probably won't last too long in your camera. Secondly, their capacity tends to drop over time, eventually leaving you with a battery that even when full won't do you much good. There are a plethora of standard chargers on the market, but today we are going to look at a charger that promises to help you get the most out of your investment in rechargeable batteries.

The LaCrosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger has all the functionality of your standard charger, along with the ability to let you measure the capacity of your batteries as well as refresh your batteries to restore capacity that has been lost over time.

What's In The Box
Let's start by taking a look at what you get in the box. In addition to the charger, you get 4 2400 mAh AA's and 4 800 mAh AAA's along with a set of converters that will allow you to use your AA's as C or D size batteries in a pinch. This all comes in a travel bag more than large enough to hold everything as well as most digital cameras.

As you can see, a big difference between this charger and your standard charger is the LED display and control buttons which are the key to unlocking the features of this charger. There are four main modes of operation for this charger.

Charge mode allows you to charge your batteries at user selectable rates between 200 mA and 1800 mA. This flexibility give you the option for a really quick charge when you are in a rush, or a slow and gentle charge to preserve the life of your batteries.

Discharge mode fully discharges your batteries before charging them up.

Test mode performs a full charge followed by a full discharge, allowing the unit to measure the actual capacity of your batteries. When the test is complete, the batteries are fully charged.

Refresh mode allows you to take batteries that have lost much of their original capacity and improve their performance. It does this through a process of slowly charging and discharging the batteries 20 times.

After a charging cycle is complete, the charger switches to trickle charge mode to keep the batteries topped off. This is a really nice feature since it can assure that you always have at least one set of batteries ready to go.