{"id":12511,"date":"2013-07-29T02:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=12511"},"modified":"2013-07-02T13:42:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T20:42:53","slug":"duracell-cef23-nimh-battery-charger-and-usb-device-charger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/duracell-cef23-nimh-battery-charger-and-usb-device-charger\/","title":{"rendered":"Duracell CEF23 NiMH battery charger and USB Device charger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Low self-discharge (LSD) NiMH batteries have been <a href=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/eneloop-batteries-in-bulk\/\">mentioned<\/a> at least 3 times before on Cool Tools under the Eneloop brand name. These batteries retain 85% of their charge after a year in storage, making them almost as convenient as alkalines (keep a few charged ones on-hand, ready to go). At about $2 each, they pay for themselves after 4 or 5 uses.<\/p>\n<p>This review is about chargers, which are not all made equal. The Duracell CEF23 is superior to other chargers in several ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Smart&#8221; charger &#8211; doesn&#8217;t just use a timer, but looks for specific behavior of the battery voltage to determine when charging is done<\/li>\n<li>Independently charges each battery &#8211; can mix AA and AAA&#8217;s and start\/stop each battery independently.<\/li>\n<li>Charge speed of about 4 hours is a happy medium between reducing the life if your cells (very rapid charge) vs. having to wait very long<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0Ability to charge from an AC outlet -or- 12VDC (e.g. car plug or solar panel)<\/li>\n<li>Ability to act as a USB device charger &#8211; powered by AC, 12VDC, -or- the 4 batteries in the charger<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those last 2 points put this charger above most others. In emergency situations, you can recharge batteries without needing AC, and you can use any 4 AA&#8217;s (NiMH or Alkaline) to top off your cellphone or other USB devices. You could pop one of these in an emergency kit and give it a recharge every year or so.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, Duracell stopped making the US version of this charger. But you can get the Australian-plug version (CEF23AU), bundled with a US-plug adapter and 4 AA LSD NiMH batteries, for about $20. That&#8217;s cheaper than most other chargers, which don&#8217;t have the extra features this one does. Not bad!<\/p>\n<p>If you add a generic 12V car power cable (e.g. from Radio Shack), a few extra LSD AA\/AAA&#8217;s batteries (consider Tenergy brand), and some &#8220;AA spacers&#8221; that let you use the AA batteries to replace C\/D batteries, you&#8217;d be totally outfitted with LSD batteries for about $60.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A superior battery and USB device charger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":22922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12513,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions\/12513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}