Last year we were on the hunt for a smart battery charger that would replace a discontinued product that successfully recharged alkaline batteries.

The only product that we located was the ?EnvironPower CT-515 Alkaline Battery Charger?

While the product looked promising we found that it presented unreliable LED status indications which often required the charger to be powered off then on the reset.

And since not all Alkaline batteries could be recharged based on quality or age we found that some batteries will leak when being charged, this caused a fatal problem in that the design of this charger means that corrosive acids will attack the battery charges contacts and even worse it will leak into the exposed printed circuit board and eventually permanently damage the charger.

From our 5 month tests we eventually ended up with two Alkaline Battery Charges that had failed as a result of leaked batteries as described above.

Since it is normal for some alkaline batteries to leak when recharged, we feel that the manufacturers of this product should have considered a better layout and protection from acids for the battery compartment. When a battery leaks when recharged then it can be said that it failed to be recharged and thrown away, this charger needs to handle such cases.

We did however enjoy some positive results with a number of batteries which we could recharge up to 6 times before noticing a significant drop of in operating times, this of course is noticeably less that the manufacturers claims that alkaline batteries could be recharged up to 20 times.

To determine what damage was experienced when the first set of batteries leaked, we pulled the casing apart and found that both the terminals and the circuit board was very badly corroded, the extend of the corrosion was severe and beyond reliable servicing. In our view this is the worst design of a product that we have ever encountered, so much so that we are quite angry in that the product has significant potential but is designed to fail. Since it is likely that the occurrence of leaking alkaline batteries is likely then this product should have considered this type of event and ensure that both the contacts and the circuit is protected from this expected situation. It is our strongest recommendation that this product should not be taken seriously unless you are focused on adding to your local landfill!

We understand that this product is marketed under numerous brand names including:

• EnvironPower
• Watts Clever

Overview

Poor Design

This product was a real pain to operate due to the 4 status lights giving erroneous indications when a battery was installed, we did not notice this problem until after we had our first battery leak while under charge. The battery compartment is poorly designed to handle the inevitable situation when a battery leaks, this will happen as there is no way to predict this situation, as a result the charging terminals will begin to corrode and even worse you will start to damage the circuit board which is also exposed where the terminals enter the battery holder.

Unfortunately, with the product failing in a two month period it will not provide a return on investment based on today�s Alkaline battery prices, therefore not helping reduce the impacts to our environment by getting multiple usages from Alkaline batteries.

It should be noted that our test used new alkaline batteries at the start of each test of various brands � leaking was not limited to a single brand of battery.

As a result of these issues, TechnicaOne has decided not to introduce this particular product as the first product tested failed within a two month period and the second in three months.

We find that too many companies who a riding the �Green Products� banner are delivering substandard products with poor product support and very poor design. As for the numerous companies who only rebrand other�s products we find that they are pulling their name down with inferior products.