On Tue, 17 Nov 2020 12:13:56 GMT, Pamela
wrote:

snip

Now, on the AAA's it states the 'Standard charge is 80mA for 16
hours' and I presume by that they mean '... to get the best life /
cycles out of the cell'.

snip

Surely that has been incorrectly taken from the standard advice to
slow charge a new battery for a long time (say 8 hours) to ensure
all cells reach max charge. Hard to see why it's applied to single
cells.

Same thing though isn't it Pamela? A battery only (typically) being a
combination of single cells wired in series and so the current though
the battery = the current though each cell?

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That Youshiko YC4000 looks like a clone of the original La Crosse
BC-700, which is a nice charger.

Yup ;-)

I had one and it (eventually) died so I replaced it with that one.

NiMH has a faint "negative delta V" voltage drop at low charge
rates. If a charger uses that method (and no others) to determine
termination then the charger may miss it and overcharge the cell
causing vented gas that reduces capacity. For that reason some
people prefer to charge at no less than 0.5C (which is 400mA for the
AAAs).

Ok, makes sense.

There used to be a forum on charging at CandlePower which was quite
active. Here's a thread which goes into more detail than I have
time to read but seems to discuss this.

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...178667-A-look-
at-slow-charging

Quick check

That looks very interesting / informative thanks. ;-)

Cheers, T i m