WATSONDuo LCD Charger for L & M Series Batteries

The good: mechanical quality seems decent. Has enough heft to sit still and not get dragged around by weight of the power cord. I am not having any problem with the adapter plates coming off too easily like some reviewers reported. Charges two nearly depleted 4800 mAh batteries in around 4 hours (I haven't timed it exactly). Comes with both AC and DC (car 12V plug) power cords.The minor warts: display backlight is obnoxious blue-white, not green as shown. No power switch.The bad: Charge level sensing and the UI are really poor. Only reads charge level in 5% steps, and inaccurately at that. Charge level sensing disagrees significantly with trusted equipment (example: Atomos Shinobi monitor reads 6% charge on a battery but the Watson charger says 20%). The slanted charge level bars are too few and don't correlate well with the numeric displayed value. Numeric display shows 3 digits of precision despite the fact that it only resolves to 5% - highly misleading. Does not show useful data like charge current and how many mAh have been applied. I have a comparably priced RC battery charger from 5 years ago that does all that and more.

The photo of this product is the same photo for all battery versions but this is the correct unit for the Sony NP-F series or the Sony DCR-VX series. The first time I ordered the wrong style despite the photo showing the unity I needed.Aside from some confusion on which unit fits which batteries,I am pleased with the operation of this unit. I use these batteries on 3 different video products, cold shoe mount LED lamp, field monitor and off camera LED lighting panels. So, this charger is a must because I use a lot of these batteries. You can actually get adapter plates to charge different battery styles, for example the Canon camera batteries. Aside from the obvious charging of 2 batteries at a time and LDC readout, the not so obvious benefit is the higher power that this unit supplies. It charges the batteries quicker than the cheap little single chargers that cost about $18. You can even feel by the weight that this unit has some copper in its guts.

I'm a professional wedding videographer and I also shoot a lot of music videos. I took a chance and bought this charger based on other reviews. Excellent charger, no complaints! I got this along with the DSTE 2x Replacement Li-ion NP-F970 Batterys. Charges them quickly within 6 hrs and it has an auto shut off so the batteries are nice and cool and ready to go after charging. This charger gives great power to my batteries to power my StudioPRO Double S-600D Led Light Panels. Yeah the little charging plates slide off sometimes after removing the batteries. Not a big deal. Its so you can change the charging plates for different types of batteries. If you have the cash and prefer to buy quality equipment go with this charger. You will not be disappointed!

I own two of these. They do their job well. It's nice to see the charge percentage on the screen. The USB port is also a nice feature which allows you to charge your phone or other batteries. With a hectic production schedule, it's reassuring to know that this unit won't overcharge the batteries if I have to walk away from them for a while. I'll be adding more to my charging case in the future.

If you have tried to use the little wall chargers for the Sony or Canon batteries, and you need to g=charge them fairly fast.... well, good luck with that. This wall charger is amazing. I am using the Sony batteries for LED video lights, and we have had several instances where we needed multiple batteries per light - per day. This charger allowed us to recharge the batteries in about 1/4 the time needed using the wall chargers.We had no issues of batteries not recognizing the charger, and the batteries all read 100% charged when installing them on the lights. I am buying the additional plates to be able to use the charger with my Canon batteries too! The fact that the plates are interchangeable is awesome!This may seem like an expensive purchase for a charger - but trust me - it's worth every penny!