Duracell rechargeable battery pack with charger... red light still on after charged for 24 hours?!?

Question

I bought a pack of 4 Duracell rechargeable batteries with the charger for my camera and I plugged it in yesterday this time to charge all 4.

It is almost 24 hours past and the red light is still on.

My camera doesnt show me if the battery is charged all the way or not, it just indicates when its about to die so I dont know if the batteries are fully charged properly.

Anyone know why I still get a red light?

Answer 1

Usually when you buy new rechargable batteries they have to be conditioned before use.

This means a long first charge, so it could be that this is what the charger is doing.

If you are using the charger that came with the camera (does it plug directly into the camera?), this can be a problem. It is always best to give 1st charges with a conventional battery charger, preferably one that charges each battery individually and is 'intelligent' enough to cut the charge when done.

You don't mention the milliamp rating for the batteries. I suspect your camera charges at a very low rate and if the batteries themselves are a high capacity (2,500mA or above), this can take a long time.

I think it is probably safe enough to try the batteries now. Just make sure you run them flat before charging again.

It could also be that if the batteries are a very high capacity and your camera is not a recent one, then it may have trouble recognising the extra capacity of these batteries.

It's like a mobile handset that states it will work with SD cards up to 2Gb, so if you put a 4GB in , it will either not work at all, or would just recognise 2GB of the card's capacity.