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73 of 73 found the following review helpful:
 Everything you could want Oct 31, 2010
By DW in Tn.
Don't be intimidated by the various cycles this charger is capable of if you are fairly new to rechargeable batteries. You can always just pop your batteries in and accept the default settings and generally get great results.
If you have batteries that aren't performing to your expectations and want to try an advanced cycle to "rescue" them, the instructions are detailed and it is just a matter of putting in one battery at a time and making a selection from a few categories. The instructions present a pretty good explanation of your choices, and you have the options at hand to possibly save older, degraded batteries.
I have owned several Maha chargers and have never been disappointed. After a couple of years with any charger it seems they come out with an upgraded unit and I MUST get it!! This charger is a leap forward and I have noticed a few key points anyone buying a charger would appreciate:
The charger is bigger than any other in its class and the batteries are spaced wider apart, apparently yielding a much cooler battery during charge and making insertion and removal much easier. My batteries only got slightly warm during charging.
The charger has a lot of vent area on the casing and runs cool to the touch regardless of the mode I used.
The display offers a wealth of information about the batteries and mode you are using. If you want to study the instructions a little, over time you can learn a lot about the condition of your batteries and how to maximize their lifespan.
I highly recommend this charger as it is the coolest running and highest quality I've ever used. Use it in its simplest mode -(pop in the batteries and walk away)- or learn about the advanced modes at your own pace. Either way, you've got what I believe is the best charger on the market at this time.
29 of 29 found the following review helpful:
Best Battery Charger and Best Warranty Ever! Mar 01, 2011
By T. Bolly
I bought my Maha MH-C9000 very close to 3 years ago and have charged hundreds of batteries with it. It's so quiet I never hear it running and I charge batteries right in my bedroom while I sleep. It charges batteries other chargers won't charge using it's "smart" features. I've had quite a few batteries I thought needed to be thrown away because any other battery charger wouldn't charge them at all but my Maha brought them back to life and kept them working great for years.
I've had some batteries that said they were rechargeable up to 500 times and using my Maha I have charged them over 800 times so far and they are still going strong. Maha's refresh and break in features make it all possible by "reprogramming" your old batteries to work like new.
About a month ago, (after almost 3 years of hard use), my Maha quit working so I emailed Maha and told them the problem. They told me to ship it to them along with my receipt so I did. Within a week I had a brand new Maha MH-C9000 delivered to my door at no charge to me. Maha's 3 year warranty is the best! Maha's customer service is the best!
Don't waste your money on any other brand. Maha is the best by far and they stand behind their products all the way with a 3 year warranty that can't be beat!
29 of 30 found the following review helpful:
Excellent!! Apr 06, 2011
By a911scanner
Based on recommendations from many different electronics forums, I decided to take the plunge on an 'intelligent" charger. To say that this one is "intelligent" compared to the basic chargers I've been using is an understatement.
To put it plainly, I had 25-30 old 2500mAh Energizers sitting around for roughly 3 years that refused to charge properly with the basic chargers included when purchased. Based on what I'd read about this charger, I thought that it may be up to the task of bringing those batteries back from the dead. The "Refresh & Analyze" and "Break-In" charging options of the Maha Wizard were just the trick! I now have about 20 functional AA batteries that were all but dead. The other bonus is that the Maha actually found the truly bad cells for me so that I could take them out of the mix.
PROS:
- Fully Programmable
- Worth the money based on extending the life of your batteries
- Easy to use after slight learning curve
CONS:
- Instructions are a bit underwhelming. Not altogether articulate enough, but can be figured out after some study.
- Size is quite large compared to basic charging units
My "Cons" are really just being a bit nit-picky. I wanted to try to be fair and balanced.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Great Charger. Feb 13, 2011
By AWBoater
While there are a few folks that have a bad opinion of this charger, I have not had any problems whatsoever.
I have a 100% success rate in charging NiMH batteries from several different manufacturers... but they were new batteries.
I suspect the problems many are claiming with the charger may perhaps be with old batteries?
The charger has a mode that you can use to recondition batteries, and it has not often been clearly stated by those complaining this charger did not work whether or not they tried to recondition the batteries (Refresh/Analyze or Break-In/Forming mode).
If a battery is marginal, I suppose that if this charger won't charge the battery, it should tell you to either recondition the battery or throw it out.
Other criticism has been the number of key strokes it takes to setup the charger for a battery. But if you don't do anything when inserting batteries, it will default to CHARGE mode using a 1A charge rate (2 hour charge rate for typical 2000mAH AA batteries).
Perhaps there should be an easier way to setup the charger, but I don't see that as something preventing it's use. This is NOT a basic (nor cheap) charger, it's a Charger/Analyzer. If you want a basic charger, you can buy one far cheaper than this one. The intended purpose of this charger is to maintain your batteries in good working order with variable charge/discharge modes. So I suppose some degree of setup is required to use the features of the charger (and it's certainly easier to use than a West Mountain CBA-3 analyzer).
I am not going to badmouth the LaCrosse charger as I don't own one, but my general opinion of LaCrosse products over the years (mostly their weather instruments) has been less than stellar - which is why I bought the Maha charger in the first place.
One observation I will make between the two chargers is that the Maha/PowerEx C9000's Break-in/Forming charge is in compliance with International Standard (IEC-61951-2.7 - Testing NiMH batteries.) while the LaCrosse BC-900 is not. While that may or may not make much difference in conditioning the batteries, the C9000 is at least going to provide more accurate test results of the battery.
If folks are having issues with batteries failing the Break-in charge from the C-9000 charger, then one could conclude their batteries are not meeting the battery performance found in the IEC standard... in other words, their batteries are bad.
25 of 29 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Unit which could be tweeked just a little(but I am picky) Dec 18, 2010
By W. Matos
This is my first MAHA charger. This is a great unit. I have had it about 1 month. I like the fact that you can see each individual cell and it's Mah tested mah rating. I have a very expensive charger for model airplane battery packs, which has all of the same functions, and will do many different voltages and mah ratings. It also does the analysis and break in(you can set all the parameters individually) which helps once the packs are built. It cannot however do individual cells, multiples at a time, showing individually each cell's stats, due to these packs being permanently affixed(it can do individual cells ONE at a time, which is why I needed something like this, as it took forever that way! But it is not just good for this, as I will explain. So I am not a novice to high quality rechargeable batteries.
I bought 32 new Sanyo Enelope pre-charged AA and was disappointed in how they lasted on the first use, right out of the box. I found a number of them on analyzing to be very low (1500 to 1700 rather than 2000). I ran the break in cycle after the analyze cycle on a number that were very low, and that bought them up to ~ 2000mah, with some being more. I did this with the rest of the bunch prior to use(analyze and then break in) and found that there were many in the same boat, but all came alive again with this series of steps and this charger. This definitely is the way to go with expensive batteries, even if they have the reputation of the Enelopes. Sanyo really should list a manufacture date on the battery product packaging, especially with these new style NiMH batteries, as I think these may have been "on the shelf" for a long time. But it really did not matter, since I had this charger to check and fix them.
Years ago, I threw away so many Energiser rechargeable batteries, because of using their supplied wall wart charging system. I would bet that had I had this charger, I would not have had to chuck them. And would not have had to purchase new batteries. So my statement above goes to anyone buying any brand of NiMH rechargeable batteries. Do not waste your money on batteries. Buy 4, try them out. This unit will let you know exactly what you are buying. If they are garbage, then you saved money already, since you won't buy more "junk". Soon you will save the cost of the charger, which is cheap, by the way.
I think that this is an excellent unit, very easy to understand and very good at what it does. Perhaps if there were a "copy" function between cells for the settings (for people who do not want to set up each individual cell like I have read in some other different ads on here, but it really is NOT that difficult at all!!!) and a way to change the scan rate of information when showing info on the screen(make it faster as it is a tad slow) would be the only improvements I could suggest. Oh, and upgrade mine when you do it too, for the idea!! {:^)
Adding individual screens for each cell would make the charger large, if it were to give all the information at one time. Not my picture of portable. and reducing the information given, is just a waste. You can match up batteries by rating, and you will get much more out of them!!! All cells in a "pack" or any multi-battery electronic device for that matter, are only as good as it's weakest brother in that pack/device at that time.Great for building modeling packs(or putting batteries in your X-Box, Wii or Play Station, or a simple remote, for that matter)! For actual batter pack building, you just have to rig a way to make contacts, and be sure you put the cells in right. For those of you whom have not done pack building, these cells do not have the tit sticking out on the positive side, allowing for soldering, so it will not make contact. These are polarized sockets, simply so you do not screw up and put a battery in backwards..
Had the 8 cell charger had all the capabilities of this one, with the same readouts, I would have bought that unit. Maybe when they make one like that with the capabilities of this unit, I will buy another MAHA!!!
When you put batteries into an electronic device that requires multiple batteries, you are essentially building a "pack" so all the advantages apply. The unit just makes it better, since you can see each individual cell, each and every time you pull them from the device! ABSOLUTELY worth the time and effort. Without the individual parameters, such as multiple bank simultaneous charging gives, you cannot match up like ratings of cells(the mgf rating is only an approximate, and not always what you think it should be..... Read above. {:^) . )
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