![]() ![]() Slow charging keeps batteries from heating up, but my understanding it has no bearing on making the batteries last longer…as was the case with lead/acid batteries. When you put a hot battery on a “smart” charger, it will cool it down before charging it, and will continue to fan/cool the battery while charging to keep heat low. It is also similar to discharging, the test where the have 50 lag belts setup and they race to drive them in, this rapid use/discharge also causes batteries to heat up. The more rapid a charger is, the more heat the battery generates. According to your logic, that will decrease battery life.”…this is correct, but as Munklepunk stated, the fans are there to keep the battery at lower temperature. See Also: Funky Retail Price Math – Makita 18V Cordless Drill Edition I suppose this helps explain why the drill-only kit is priced at $359 – with a rapid charger – and this 2pc kit is priced lower at $339. If the new charger is a cost-cutting measure, I’d rather see another price increase. Makita USA raised their prices (except for certain SKUs) in April 2022, October 2022, and again in May 2023. I can understand a slower charger being included with $99 drill and impact driver kits, or 5 and 6 piece combo kits that are promotionally priced at $299. Makita’s fast battery charging speeds have always been a big selling point. ![]() So why is Makita USA bundling their kit with this new slower charger?Įven if Makita didn’t bundle the new XT296ST kit with their typical rapid charger, why not at least the “standard” DC18SD charger that is often included with the brand’s seasonal promotionally-priced 18V power tool kits and combo kits?ġ35 minutes to recharge a 5Ah battery? “A power tool battery that won’t charge in the time of a typical lunch break is not acceptable.” International versions of the 2pc combo kit are bundled with a rapid charger. The rapid charger can charge three of the same batteries in this time. If the retail listing and online manual I found for the DC18WC are accurate – and they do look to be – is 135 minutes an acceptable amount of time for a battery to be sitting on a charger?Īccording to the specs I found, it takes the DC18WC charger 2 hours and 15 minutes to charge just one of the 18V 5Ah batteries in this kit. The most expensive asset on a jobsite is labor, and that’s why Makita batteries are engineered to spend more time working and less time sitting on the charger. This is what they once told me in an email conversation, with the emphasis my own:īased on what we see and hear on jobsites across America, a power tool battery that won’t charge in the time of a typical lunch break is not acceptable, even if it does deliver longer run time. We don’t always see eye to eye, but Makita USA’s communication manager made a good point. What’s the point of Makita advertising that their new tool kit comes with fast-charging batteries, if they aren’t disclosing that each battery takes 2 hours and 15 minutes to recharge with the included charger? If this is accurate, here are the 5Ah battery charging times for the three models: I cropped out the 14.4V charging times.Īccording to this, the charger does appear to take 135 minutes to fully charge a 5Ah battery. I found a user manual for the DC18WC charger online – but not on Makita’s website – and found this chart. In the product details, it says that it takes 135 minutes to charge a 5Ah battery.Īmazon listings don’t always have accurate specs, so I looked around a bit more. I found one listing on Amazon UK, where it is described as an economy and compact charger. ![]() It wasn’t easy to find specs or charging times for this new Makita DC18WC charger. It’s not, or at least it doesn’t appear to be. With that in mind, I thought that this was a new and more compact rapid charger. The Kit includes two fast-charging 18V LXT 5.0Ah batteries ![]() Makita 18V LXT Lithium-Ion Batteries have the fastest charge times in their categories, so they spend more time working and less time sitting on the charger. Here is what Makita says on their product page and in marketing copy for their new XT296ST cordless power tool kit: Makita USA doesn’t have a product page for this charger on their website (at least not that I could find), but its charging times can be found in their user manual. ![]()
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