As a flashlight enthusiast, you might be interested in this new professional battery charger and analyzer for checking and maintaining your batteries.
The full review is available here
English review at BudgetLightForum
German review on my website
Summary
For many years, the SkyRC MC3000 has been considered one of the best chargers for round batteries. The user has full control over the charging process and can set not only the charging current but also many other parameters. It can also connect to a PC or smartphone for settings and data logging.
And here comes the new SkyRC MC5000!
I was really looking forward to the SkyRC MC5000: a modern design with a large color display, innovative scroll-wheel input, charging currents of up to 5 A per slot, Bluetooth connectivity and advanced analysis features.
All in all, everything has worked so far, but the range of functions still seems somewhat limited. Many enhancements could potentially be introduced through firmware updates, such as expanded parameter ranges, more effective use of the status LEDs and possibly even support for 1.5V Li-ion batteries. The absence of program memory slots is particularly disappointing. At this price point, a PC interface for control and data logging should also be included.
In its current form, the SkyRC MC5000 is still a long way from being a real successor for the MC3000. It is not a bad device by any means, but it does not yet fully meet the expectations I have for a professional charger in this class.
I live in a world of mostly Li-ion batteries around me, NiMH come second. Primary (alkaline) batteries? Nope, never use them because of their poor performance, environmental problems and because they leak.
Not all of my devices can charge their Li-ion batteries. A simple charger is enough in most scenarios. You only need an analyzing charger if you want to monitor and maintain the performance of your batteries.
@SammysHP The reason I use Alkaline in some applications is I have some devices where voltage is important and they will not run on 1.35 NiMH voltage but they will run on 1.6 Alkaline voltage. But I agree, performance is bad. Unfortunately the 1.5v lithium ion cells aren't really 1.5v, they're 3.7 or so and regulated down. This causes two issues, the regular introduces a lot of RF noise, and the voltage is flat right up to the point of complete exhaustion so you can't tell when the battery is ready to crap out.
It's presumably not your doing, but I have to note that's a terrible design. Under light load, an alkaline hasn't even expended a third of its energy by the time it hits 1.35V (example test result).
And then there's some Ikea smart stuff that reportedly only work reliabli with NiMH cells lol