My vote is to just buy the extra Sony chargers. The OEM single battery charger has always worked fairly quickly, and flawlessly for me.
The Sony NPA-MQZ1K is not really meant to be a charger. It comes with a dummy battery, and it's primary purpose is to be used to extend shooting time of a camera when you stick 4 batteries in it, and then use the 4 batteries to power the dummy battery to power the camera. Think video shooters. It just so happens to also be a charger, and not a very good one. Many of the bad reviews are people trying to use it solely as a 4 battery charger!
A bit off topic, but as part of my trip prep, I bought an extra NP-FZ100. Popped it the NP2, and it read 1%. After 30 minutes, it was only 3%. I'm going to return it. First time I've experienced a dead new (manufacture date 2023) battey, the other NP-FZ100s I have (5 of them), all started out at around 50% or better. Anyone else have this experience?
Chargers 2 at a time, over 16w, so in two hours, it will charge two fully depleted batteries (16kwh capacity), and that’s fairly fast.
This gives you two
And if you have modern cameras, you can PD the rest in body, this is one of the faster methods, but you will need a high end battery bank to pull this off. The charge is about 15w from my testing, a little over an hour for in body. This gives you another 3 batteries.
Another option from a video user perspective, belt battery packs + coiled dummy battery/coiled usb-c= infinite power Len R wrote:
It looks like Sony does not make a charger that will charge more than one NP-FZ100 at a time. I will be going on a photo expedition with 3 cameras and 6 batteries, and will have only about 90 minutes between outings, each of which will last about 3 hours. I expect to be shooting for most of the three hours. I'd rather not bring 3 separate Sony battery chargers. There are many third party alternatives, ranging in price from super cheap to crazy expensive (Dolgin Engineering). Any advice based on actual user experience?
Thanks,
Len
Len R wrote:
A bit off topic, but as part of my trip prep, I bought an extra NP-FZ100. Popped it the NP2, and it read 1%. After 30 minutes, it was only 3%. I'm going to return it. First time I've experienced a dead new (manufacture date 2023) battey, the other NP-FZ100s I have (5 of them), all started out at around 50% or better. Anyone else have this experience?
Just got a new A7CR last week and I was surprised that the included battery was completely dead when I opened the box. Usually there’s at least some charge. Took awhile to top up the battery, I didn’t time it but probably longer than the battery I had been using with my previous camera. Now the new battery works and charges like normal, so I wasn’t too worried about it.
Len R wrote:
A bit off topic, but as part of my trip prep, I bought an extra NP-FZ100. Popped it the NP2, and it read 1%. After 30 minutes, it was only 3%. I'm going to return it. First time I've experienced a dead new (manufacture date 2023) battey, the other NP-FZ100s I have (5 of them), all started out at around 50% or better. Anyone else have this experience?
I think that's the norm these days. The last couple I got over the last two years all have very little charge left, definitely less than 10%. I think they are never charged up out of the factory now due to fire concern during shipping. I suppose that's bad for the battery, but it's the way the situation seems to be. I will be more worried about receiving one that has a lot of charge now since it may have already been used.
Not sure if that's the norm, I just got an A7R5 and the battery that came with it had more than 30% charge. Anyway, I charged the new battery to 100% and will test it to see if behaves normally before returning it.
I have used ISDT charger since 2018. It is an excellent charger but you need to have reasonably good power source to simultaneosly charge 2 batteries in the fast mode. In practice IPad carger is fine, iPhone charger might be a limitation.
In practice in my everyday life I carge batteries more and more often in camera via usb-c.
shac wrote:
Yes - never had an issue charging 2 simultaneously
