With a large number of electronic instruments in the market, digital cameras continue to be one of the harshest tests of battery capacity, making rechargeable battery technology a critical issue for digicam owners. There are a large number of battery chargers for digital cameras available today.

Optimum battery life is not only a matter of buying the highest-capacity NiMH cells, it’s also important to get a good-quality charger. Some battery chargers for digital cameras overcharge and can damage batteries, others drastically under-charge, making your high-capacity NiMH cells little better than garden-variety cheapies, so your choice of charger is critical to getting the best use from your batteries.

The Evolution Of Battery Chargers

As you would expect, over the course of three years, even something as seemingly ordinary as battery chargers for digital cameras have technologically evolved. In part based on test results, Maha has developed a charger that does an even better job of “topping off” batteries than the old battery giant C-204F did, and added a host of other advancements as well. The result is the new Maha Powerex C-204W, the subject of this review. Thanks to the advancements that Maha has made, the C-204W has finally taken over the top spot as the charger.

More importantly, the C-204W has a pretty sophisticated algorithm for detecting alkaline batteries, which are unsafe to recharge. Another tradeoff made with the C-204W is that it now supports only NiMH batteries, dropping the support for NiCd cells that the 204F offered.

In testing of batteries and battery chargers for digital cameras, It was found that fast chargers invariably leave the batteries in a less than “full” condition when the quick-charging cycle is over. Some chargers drop to a trickle charge mode after the fast charging is complete, which does help to “top off” the batteries if you leave them in the charger overnight. But even the 204F couldn’t seem to get the last 2-5% of capacity into a battery:

Another important factor is the gentleness, weird as it may sound, but for a battery charger for digital cameras it’s an important one if you want to get the maximum life out of your batteries. Some chargers seriously overheat batteries, which can shorten their life. Too much heat for too long will definitely lead to early exhaustion.

The C-204W from Maha is a “smart” charger. Like the 204F, the 204W variants it again has two independent charging circuits, so it can charge batteries either two or four at a time. This is an important feature these days, as many cameras operate on just two AA batteries, and it’s important to charge batteries in the same groups that they are used in, to keep from over- or undercharging cells with different usage patterns.

Cost wise, the C-204W is pretty reasonably priced with a street price of about $30. You can also buy it from several suppliers in kits including a set of 4 PowerEx AA cells, giving you a bit of a price break on the combo.

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