Ray-O-Vac Platinum Charger and Battery Update

Updates
From a review I wrote at Amazon.

I bought this package at Walmart back in Sept or Oct of 2011. I was just tired of paying for lithium batteries for my camera. I use my camera a fair amount to make video records of my hiking excursions with the beagle for my blog, among other things.

I have not used the AAA batteries at all, so this review is oriented toward the AA batteries contained in the package along with the package of AA batteries I later purchased to supplement those that came with the charger.

Believe it or not, there are a bunch of people who spend a lot of time with very expensive chargers and very expensive batteries that claim this charger and these batteries are not "good enough". Maybe they are right. I have recharged them dozens of times and never had any issues. No doubt I have saved my self the cost of the Lithium batteries they replaced many times over by now. So as far as I am concerned, it has worked out pretty well for me.

I suspect some of the concerns the detractors raise may well have an element of truth to them. And if I were willing to spend 5X what I paid for this package to resolve the fairly minor issues they raise, I might do so. But I am not. One cannot avoid the cost aspect in determining value. It is a critical part of the equation.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 for two reasons. One is that it can only charge batteries in pairs. Since my use is for a camera and a GPS that always use them in pairs, this is not that big of a deal. But, if you use batteries one at a time, it might be an issue to you.

The second reason is that I think the suggestion that it recharges batteries a little faster than it should for optimum battery life is probably true. There is a bit of a marketing thing going on here I suspect. Trading battery life for a faster recharge cycle may be an attractive proposition to some people. It is not to me. I just plug them in over night and the charger shuts off when it is done. So even if it took twice as long to charge up, it would not matter much to me.