The Medway Handyman wrote:
Just got a flyer from www.itslondon.co.uk who have special offers on Makita
batteries amongst other things.

14.4v x 2.6Ah NiMH battery for £30 + VAT. Seems good to me.

Not bad certainly (assuming they are real and not knock offs)....

I currently have 1.3Ah NiCD's, so I guess the extra Ah would be useful, but
is there an advantage or indeed disadvantage to NiMH batteries? I guess the
same charger would work?

With decent NiMH cells there ought to be little practical usage
difference - same rules apply - don't charge a hot pack etc.

Most modern Makita chargers[1] are designed to handle both, although
some of the very old ones will not charge NiMH packs (they won't damage
them - they just wont even try). (Makita tend to have additional
contacts on their NiMH packs for things like temperature sensing etc -
which the old charger won't have matching contacts for). The chargers
will also usually handle any pack voltage from 7.2V up to their maximum.
So my mates 14.4V packs charge fine in my 18V charger, but not the other
way round.


[1] Excluding LiIon ones which only do LiIon

--
Cheers,

John.

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