Review on Nitecore i2 Intellicharge Charger: Versatile Charging Solution for 18650 AAA AA Li-Ion/NiMH Batteries by Ashley Branch

I received this unit to replace an excellent La Crosse charger that finally gave up the ghost after years of reliable use. The La Crosse charger would tell you the voltage of each battery to the hundredth decimal place and you knew it was accurate because if you take a battery from one slot and put it in another you get the same number. Fast forward to this Nitecore i2. With the i2, I put the batteries in the charger, charged them fully, took them out for 10 seconds, put them back in the charger. And Nitecore only showed 1 or 2 out of 3 LEDs and continued charging. See the Eneloop dough on the left? The i2 showed this with three LEDs lighting up without blinking, indicating a full charge 10 seconds sooner. Then I took it out and put it back in and voila, now it only has 1 LED on. i2 will do this over and over again, seemingly endlessly. I tried this with about 20 new Sanyo eneloop AA and AAA NiMH batteries. Some people have written here that this is because the i2 takes a few seconds to identify the batteries upon reassembly, but at least in my case this explanation doesn't work for two reasons. First, because the indicators fall to one. But two or more serious reasons are that after the i2 has analyzed a battery that has just been fully charged, it will start a heavy charge cycle if that battery is simply removed and reinserted, to the point where a freshly charged battery will get hot again becomes. So it's not just an i2 that takes time to identify the battery. Maybe my charger was defective, but that was my experience. It gets worse. See the battery on the right? It's alkaline Duracell. Non-rechargeable. i2 should refuse, but it doesn't. Therefore, it cannot determine whether a battery is NiMH or alkaline, nor can it determine whether it is fully charged, partially charged, or not charged. So what do we have? A charger that cannot determine battery chemistry cannot determine battery capacity and cannot determine battery health. What COULD identify this charger? As far as I can tell, nothing.