NiMH Battery chargers

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m thinking about upgrading my home battery charger. Curious what recommendations folks might have. I’d like a relatively fast charger - I have a recollection of using one that would charge AAA’s in about 20-30 minutes, but now most of what I’m seeing for the fast chargers is more in the ballpark of 1.5-2 hours for a 1000 mAh AAA. Is my recollection wrong? Is the 1.5-2 hours about the best I can do?

Also, I’m seeing a bunch that have a button to switch to a discharge mode. This one, for example. Are there any chargers that auto-discharge and then switch to charging once it has the batteries empty? Or is that always going to a manual switch/button?

In terms of general specs, I basically need to charge AA and AAA’s, though it’d be nice to be able to charge other battery sizes too. Maybe I’ll buy some someday. And I definitely need to charge batteries independently. None of this pairs stuff.

Anything else I should keep in mind?

2

Fast charging (step-differential charging) for NiMH batteries seems to be an initial blast at 1C, then letting the battery cool down for a few minutes, then continuing at a lower current, and so on. So 1.5-2 hours seems about right, unless it’s a special battery designed for ultra-fast charging.

3

All my current chargers, other than ones dedicated to specific camera batteries, are Nitecore units.

Some charge 4 cells at once, and one can do eight at a time. All my flashlight cells are 18650 Li-Ion, but I also charge some NiMh AA and AAA cells as well.