docholliday
Well-known member
It'll be interesting to see how your Nitecore stands up against the Hahnel-style design. I'll tell you that for the "actual" Hahnel charger on the Phase One/Canon batteries, it sucks. Extremely. The only thing worse was the Watson/Chinese knockoff chargers. The current Cube version didn't fare much better. Maybe HB improved upon the base and made their version actually function!As I said, no idea which is "better".
I had/have A Nitecore charger for my Leica SL (when I had it) and CL as well as the Leica chargers. I found was that the Nitecore charge worked well, the display was, eh?, mostly of little added value. The significant thing I found was that the Leica chargers did a better job: Nitecore was a lot more conservative about what they considered a full charge and, in general, the same battery charged to full in the Leica charger would produce about 20% more exposures on a charge compared to when charged in the Nitecore. Better is hard to define in that context.
The main advantage to the Nitecore charger was that I could own a spare charger for much less money and that it connected to my existing USB power supply that I needed for other electronic devices when traveling. It is also more compact than the Leica charger for the CL. This meant fewer things to remember to pack, or risk losing, when traveling ... worth a few fewer exposures per charge for that.
I've had the Hasselblad dual charger for some time now and it seems to do an excellent job. It's more compact than the Nitecore charger and comes with another power supply and cable, so its $150 price tag has to be compared against a slightly higher price for the Nightcore which does not come with a power supply by default ($10 extra) and has only the short USB-A pigtail built in (which, if it fails, means tossing the unit). The one Hasselblad cable can be used to connect power to the camera, to the charger, or move data to and from my iPad Pro 11".
Pluses and minuses. I ordered one of the Nitecore chargers a few days ago (I like having a spare charger in case one gets damaged) as a backup, so I'll be able to compare it with the Hasselblad unit a little more specifically once it arrives.
G
The display on the Nitecore chargers is very useful if you watch them carefully and charge when a known dead point on the battery occurs. For example, when the camera actually shuts off on its own. You can then tell how much charge was pushed into the cells and establish a battery health/wear note. You can use this to do the same at a later time to see when batteries need replaced and/or pushed into a backup pool. I record the battery voltage at "low" and use it to graph a full charge into the pack.
I'd also definitely recommend having one, maybe two, backup chargers, no matter the brand or camera. Yes, having one die or disappear always seems to occur at the most un-opportune times. Wait until you have a surge take out the active AND backup chargers at the same time, then fixing/rigging it while on set with a gas soldering iron. Ugh.