Besides tinkering around with Python and system stuff as evident from the bigger title of this blog, I am also a certified battery charger nut. Just the technology behind battery chargers and the types of them out there totally fascinates me. Recently, I was offered the chance to review one of the new battery chargers from Xtar called the
XP4. Why is this battery charger special ? Well to fully appreciate how this charger is special firstly you got to understand that batteries are made out of different compositions, the two main camps currently used are the Nickle and Lithium camps. Your typical rechargeable AA/AAA you find in the market nowadays are usually of the Nickle camp while your phone and laptops usually uses Lithium batteries. Each camps' batteries have their own special way they like to be charged and in a lot of ways are different.
Because of this difference, making a charger that can automatically sense the type of battery put into it and charge it just the way it likes to be charge proves to be a challenge not many chargers currently in the market can answer currently. Currently the majority of chargers in the market are what you would call "dumb chargers" as in their time based, where they will charge up until a certain point then switch off. Put in a battery that is 80% full vs 10% and it will still "dumbly" charge it for 5 hours then switch off. Not too efficient or smart.
Before this, there are actually chargers being sold that can charge both of them but these class of chargers are what people call "Hobby Chargers" because they were mainly used to charge battery packs used for RC toys. This also meant that if you were just looking for a charger with battery trays built in to charge 'normal' batteries, you are better off looking somewhere else. How these chargers handled dual chemistry is by having the user choose the type of battery that they are going to charge before hand.
The XP4 is a dual chemistry charger new in the market. It can charge NiCD, NiCd and Lithium batteries. I have tried charging mostly NiMh batteries on it as I do not really own any Lithium batteries (well not yet). So, far from what I can see, the charger works flawlessly. It has four independant channels. What this means is that each channel works by itself like a self contained battery charger and can work individually without being effected by the other channels. Some battery chargers out in the market now have paired channels. That means that batteries must be charged in pairs as the underlying circuitry pairs up the channels.
I was happy and excited to review this charger as personally I am happy that Chinese electronics are finally starting to come out on their own with their own brands rather than just acting as the behind-the-scenes manufacturer for other companies. Xtar or Xtarlight is one of the more reputable companies based in Hong Kong.
This charger will also mark Xtar's first batch of foray (the other charger being XP1) into the NiMh/NiCd scene. More and more you see these new Chinese companies coming out with their own brand of chargers which have no counterpart on the European which are at the same time affordable. While for now buying and using these chargers for now can be like a walk on the wild side as in the huge mixing bowl there are good as well as not so reputable manufacturers, a few good companies like Xtarlight has emerged that produce good and stable hardware. If the chargers produced by them have good functionality coupled with good safety features, I say all the more power to them! I am impartial to who really produces them, as long as it's a good product, though traditionally Chinese / Asian manufacturers have not really been known to put consumer safety high up in their list as they do not have as stringent as the standards enforced on them compared to their Western counterparts.
