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Nightcore battery charger for the Leica M10


marcg

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Just in case anyone is considering buying one of these, I bought an M10 battery charger by Nightcore. It can charge two batteries at once and it uses a USB cable rather than the ordinary 240 V "spectacle" cable.
Larger than a standard M 10 battery charger – but smaller than two of them together – and of course charges both batteries through the single cable. Has a display on it which tells you the charging situation and when it's full et cetera.

I don't how much Leica battery chargers are – but I suppose the because it has the word "Leica" on it I can imagine you pay a premium. I bought my Nightcore for 55 quid – delivery included.

I've only tried using it from a mains USB charger. I haven't tried using it in a vehicle – but I expect he would work equally well.

So far – definitely a very good purchase.

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I would strongly recommend against purchasing this device.

I was sold one in Miami during a workshop with Leica.

They thought was the best thing ever.

I have used it for over six months and the charge is variable and sometimes poor.All the nonsense about showing all that informationn on the little screenn is worthless and does not help any because sometimes it shows the liitle bars as full charge and when you put the battery in the camera is not charged. This has happened to me several times.

You are better off with the Leica charger.The other one is a chinese gadget not worth the money, believe me.

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7 hours ago, madrigalmaster said:

I would strongly recommend against purchasing this device.

I was sold one in Miami during a workshop with Leica.

They thought was the best thing ever.

Same here.  Bought one after the workshop.   I have 4 M10 batteries.  The charger said one of them is no good and would not charge it.  But Leica charger has no problem charging it.  Use Leica charger exclusively now.

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There have been several threads on this.  I notice that Leica Store Miami no longer is selling the M10 dual charger, so perhaps it is being revised.  The situation seems to be:   

   The NiteCore chargers are more convenient, especially for traveling, because they take their power from any sufficiently powerful USB outlet.

   They use a simpler, faster charging protocol, that may stop too soon and only get to the region of 80% charged. Which is good enough for L-mount four-bar camera battery monitors, but not good enough for the M10 with its 1% indicated accuracy.

   When you want 100%, remove the battery from the charger when it stops and put it back for a final charge.  This shifts the charger into a slower profile and gets the last 10-20%.

   The M10 charger has a second weakness, which may be why it has gone away for a while.  If you leave the batteries on the charger (e.g. overnight), after reaching full charge, they discharge to a lower state.  So the circuit that should disconnect the battery isn't working properly.

 

So if all this just gives you headaches, don't use them.  But they do work and don't cost much.  On balance, it is nice to see them offered in Leica stores as a customer convenience. And the measurements they display seem to be accurate.

Edited by scott kirkpatrick
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Okay here's a bit more feedback.

Yes – it seems to charge both batteries to a point where the M 10 battery display indicates that they are 100% charged.

It's correct that it doesn't charge both batteries at the same time. It charges one at a time – so this will not give you a shortcut to charging two empty batteries.

If you place both batteries into the charger when it is already plugged in, then it will start charging the first battery to have been placed into the charger. It then moves on to the second battery regardless of whether batteries have been placed into position number 1 or position number 2.

If you place both batteries into the charger and then plug in the charger, it begins with battery number 1 and then moves to battery number 2.

It does not prioritise the more depleted battery. It prioritises – as above – either battery number 1 – or the first battery to have been placed into the charger when it was already plugged in. This is a shame. I expect that this could have been dealt with by firmware. It would have been a nice feature

So from that point of view, if you have two discharged batteries and you only have a short time to get them each charged up, then you need to get two chargers. If you have two discharged batteries and you simply want to be able to plug them in and forget it and come back a few hours later or in the morning without having had to return to your charger and replace the battery, then the Nightcore will probably do the job.

I haven't taken any timings for the operation of the charger against the operation of the Leica charger – but I wouldn't be able to measure the starting point anyway so I wouldn't be able to give a valid result.

In any event, fast charging of any battery is generally to be deprecated as it eventually will shorten the life of the battery more quickly.

Yes, it's correct that once the battery shows that it is fully charged, if you take it out and then put it back into the charger, it will resume charging for a short while and push the level of charge up a bit. This is the case with any battery charger. I'm not sure if this is a good thing for any battery – I suspect it might not be.

I'm not able to comment on the suggestion that if you leave the battery in the charger after it is fully charged that it starts to discharge albeit very slowly.

 

Edited by marcg
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16 hours ago, pico said:

Please get back to us to affirm that it truly charges both batteries to full charge as shown in the camera. Thank you.

 

Hello pico, I've had one of these dual chargers for some months now, and yes it does show a charge to 100% when checked in camera.

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5 hours ago, marcg said:


It's correct that it doesn't charge both batteries at the same time. It charges one at a time – so this will not give you a shortcut to charging two empty batteries.

 

Sorry but this is not accurate, please check out the link below. In the same thread, I also posted a picture of the charger in quick charge mode which charges both batteries at the same time.

 

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I own the Nitecore dual M10 battery charger model# ULM10 Pro.

I really like the LCD information panel that provides status of the charging process including amperage, voltage, temperature (C° only), charge level and charging progress bar.

To test the level of charge in the Nitecore, I inserted batteries fully charged in the Nitcore into the Leica charger. The Leica charger indicated a full charge. This was confirmed when I inserted the batterie into my M10 and checking the charge. All good!

Even though the Nitecore charger is larger than the Leica charger, it weighs less. 

You must use a higher amperage AC USB adapter. I use the adapter that came with my iPad Pro and it works fine with the Nitecore charger.

I will take this charger on my next vacation, but will also take my Leica charger as a back-up since you cannot charge the batterie in the M10 like I can do with my Fuji XT3.

Regards,
Bud James

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.

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I see a listing on Amazon for "revised 2019" version of the M10 charger, and I assume that means that something has been done about the tendency for batteries to leak back down after they finish charging, but I did not see any explicit statement that this is fixed.  In the meantime, some stores that were carrying that charger are currently not listing it.  My copy exhibits these idiosyncracies, but I will continue to use it, with caution.

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1 hour ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

I see a listing on Amazon for "revised 2019" version of the M10 charger, and I assume that means that something has been done about the tendency for batteries to leak back down after they finish charging, but I did not see any explicit statement that this is fixed.  In the meantime, some stores that were carrying that charger are currently not listing it.  My copy exhibits these idiosyncracies, but I will continue to use it, with caution.

Look at question posed and answered.

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I just checked on Amazon.  The one reviewer for the revised unit says that he received a defective unit that didn't even turn on.  The question that was answered, saying that the leakage is now fixed, was answered by the reseller.  I would give them a little more time to have a customer confirm the fix.

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Left: double fast charging on Quick Charge 2.0 mode.

Right: single charging on standard USB port.

Bottom: my “Anker PowerPort+ 1“ with QC 2.0 support.

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Edited by Coltma
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