The only thing worse than watching paint dry is watching flat batteries charging especially since the likely reason why you’re watching them is because you need them charged… Like now.

Gone are the days when rechargeable batteries need to be left replenishing overnight. No longer do you need to wake up in the morning and groan as you realised you forgot to set your batteries on charge.

This is 2008. Our food is fast so why shouldn’t our batteries recharge just as quickly? Well, consumer batteries aren’t quite to the pace of your local burger joint, but they’re certainly catching up.

I recently bought a new Canon Speedlite 430EX flashgun and it requires 4 AA batteries. Alkaline cells can be used to power it, but rechargeables have the edge on three counts:

• They’re environmentally friendlier. Being able to use the same battery over 1,000 times means less throw away technology and less landfill.
• They’ll save you money. Top brand alkaline batteries may be fractionally cheaper than nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeables, but you only get a single use out of them. Okay, there are alkaline battery chargers, but you can’t charge them anywhere near as many times as nickel cadmium (NiCd) or NiMH batteries.
• Although they have a slightly lower voltage per cell (1.2V as opposed to 1.5V for alkalines), they have a lower internal resistance which means less wasted energy and more current throughput meaning faster flash charging times.

So I decided it was time to replace my overnight AA charger with something more up-to-date. As there was a chance that I’d need fresh batteries whilst out on a photo shoot, I chose a charger that came equipped with an in-car charging facility as well as domestic mains charging.

Cue the UNiROSS 1-hour fast charger and 2700mAH NiMH AA batteries.

Other than carry out controlled tests on their capacity, which I haven’t done, there’s not really much to say about these batteries other than they seem to do the job well and I was happily flashing away for most of the day without them dying on the job.

The charger itself is a compact unit with two detachable power leads depending on whether you’re charging at home or in-car. Capable of charging AAA as well as AA batteries, the contacts neatly flip down to accommodate the shorter length of the former.

Two LEDs (one for each pair of batteries) indicate whether or not charging is in progress or just trickle charging to keep the charged batteries topped-up. As with probably all modern chargers, this unit automatically controls charging so there’s no risk of over-charging.

The one thing I will say is that although the charger is punted as a 1-hour charger, the usage guidance actually suggests that it will charge 2 of the 2700mAH AA batteries in 1-hour, but it will take 3.5-hours to charge 4 of them. A slight omission of the facts from UNiROSS’s marketing department, no doubt, since you don’t find this out until you open up the packaging.

Still, 3.5-hours isn’t too shabby to fully recharge flat, high-capacity AA NiMH batteries and AAA batteries will obviously take less time. Add in the on-the-road charging feature and you’ve got a very nice package.

Get the UNiROSS 1-hour fast charger and four 2700mAH NiMH AA performance batteries from Amazon.