POWEROWL 8 Bay AA AAA Battery Charger, USB High-Speed Charging, Independent Slot, for Ni-MH Ni-CD Rechargeable Batteries, No Adapter

I initially ordered and received this item in March, but did not need to use it until May. I recycled the box right away. When I plugged in the charger, there were no lights and it didn’t work despite trying several charging blocks and power strips with USB ports. I was not able to return through Amazon as it was beyond the 30 day return period. I contacted the company, and after a few emails in which I described the issue and sent pictures, they immediately sent me a new charger (which I tested right away!) and it works great. I appreciated the quick response. They also sent 4 additional AA and AAA rechargeable batteries with the new charger – very nice!

This charger may be inexpensive but it’s actually a really good deal for the price. It provides two charging outputs based on the number of inserted batteries. 1-4 batteries: 500mAh | 5-8: 250mAh

If I’m in need of a quicker charge I’ll just insert 1-4 and the charging times are half the time of 5-8 batteries. The charging time depends on the capacity of your NiMH batteries. I use 2800mAh AA and 1100mAh AAA EBL high capacity LSD (Low Self Discharge) batteries with this device.

I find the output current acceptable and preferable. The higher the current you put into batteries when charging the more damage is done over time and they’ll be much hotter during charging – contributing to even more damage. Lower currents, or trickle charging batteries, will allow them to reach their full rated cycle count. While it seems inconvenient to have to wait hours to charge, just remember that it’s worth the wait in saved batteries.

I’m not sure what the “damaged” battery fix feature does. We don’t currently have any “damaged” batteries and the manual states this feature is only for batteries that were deeply discharged beyond the acceptable limits. I guess if this ever happens to us we’ll see if that mode actually does anything.

This charger heats up a good bit when charging batteries. Keep it on a solid surface to allow the heat to dissipate better. Don’t place it on your carpet. Put it on a table or something with good airflow.

What I do to compensate for the longer charging times is to have enough batteries on hand that I always have some ready and charged to swap into my devices while I charge the depleted ones. It’s common and easy to find LSD (Low Self Discharge) NiMH batteries and I highly recommend people only purchase batteries with low self discharge. For the brand of batteries we use, EBL, we find that the claimed discharge over time is accurate. We use our batteries and swap them often enough that we don’t know what that figure would be over very long time frames, but it will vary based on brand and quality.

I highly recommend EBL batteries with this charger. They have some of the highest capacities available and a 1,200 cycle count which is above average for their capacity. Well worth the cost and they don’t cost much more than cheapo ones. I expect them to last close to the claimed 1,200 cycles, partly thanks to the low charging currents offered by this charger. You can check and measure capacity and charge level with a multi-meter and some electronics knowledge (which I have).

Overall this charger is great! Word of caution: don’t keep the batteries inserted for long periods of time after they complete charging. A few hours or waiting overnight to take them out isn’t a big deal breaker. But don’t leave them in their for days or weeks on end. This charger is not designed to handle that and could lead to damage or reduced cycle count. This is also clearly laid out in the manual.

My only complaint with this charger is that it heats up quite a bit when charging, especially if charging 8 AA at once. Other than that the smart chip feature appears to be real and works very well.

So far, I’ve used this to charge 4 AA Duracell NiMH batteries that were drained in a video recorder. Interestingly, when the batteries were new, the recorder only showed them providing about 80% charge, but after being used up and charged with the PowerOwl battery charger they now show 100%. This is probably because they lost some charge sitting on the shelf before I bought them, but it shows me the charger did a good job of filling them.

It has a very easy to use design and I like that each battery has its own LED so you can see which ones takes the longest to charge and if one doesn’t finish charging you can still see that the others are ok. I also like that the charger is USB powered. The only small negative I see is that it uses a micro-USB instead of USB-C. I don’t know if there is a technical reason for doing this. USB-C is more convenient since it fits both ways. However, micro-USB is also good because it’s such a popular standard that there are often other micro-USB cables lying around if you lose one.

AAA batteries also fit, but I haven’t tried any yet.

These chargers work very well. The higher the capacity of the battery, the longer it takes to charge. I bought 1 and then another due to good performance. I keep a few AA and AAA batteries in the charger at all times to avoid having to wait for the batteries to charge.

The chargers don’t “repair” batteries. I have gone though at least 10 (likely more) PowerOwl brand batteries due to poor performance. The charger doesn’t revive them. Different brand batteries in the same application outperform the PowerOwl brand batteries. So I do not believe the “repair” function is real or practical.

I would buy their chargers again. I would recommend.

This charger works great. It got to us just in time before Hurricane Milton. We wanted to ensure we had enough batteries charged for when the power went out. Since it was hot and needed to make sure that we had fully charged batteries for a couple of fans and to make sure that we had lights as well The charger worked great and charged all of our batteries really quickly. It also let us know that we had a couple of bad batteries as well. Which was good to know. I would highly recommend this charger to everyone.