8 hours to charge a lithium battery! What?

[Brian Elfert]

I bought a Ryobi drill with two lithium batteries from Home Depot recently. It was a special buy for $99. It seemed like a heck of a deal. It turns out the reason it is such a deal is it has an EIGHT hour charger! Who ever heard of it taking 8 hours to charge a cordless battery?

I need to figure out an alternative because I wear out batteries in less than 8 hours. It would cheaper to buy a charger than to return this and pay $149 for the drill kit with 60 minute charger. There is a good chance I will get the vehicle charger that is $10 more than the regular charger. It charges in 60 minutes and my vehicle has a constant on 18 volt outlet.

[Van Huskey]

8 hours, really??!!?? It that what it is actually taking, what the manual says or both?

[Brian Elfert]

The manual says 8 hours. I thought it was taking a long time before the charge was complete and I finally read the manual. I just got back from getting the in-vehicle charger from Home Depot. I won't have to drive to a place with power now to charge my batteries.

I have Makita tools as my primary cordless tools. They charge in an hour or less. The Ryobi is for special cases when I need to be able to switch between three or four cordless tools. I bought a Ryobi cordless miter saw cheap on Craigslist for special projects. The Makita one is too expensive plus I don't usually have enough Makita batteries to go around.

[Van Huskey]

Thats NUTS!!! I assume that isn't just some anomoly for the first charge based on your full post. I had considered getting one of those sets since I have a bunch of 18v Ryobi tools (cheaper to buy sets than replace batteries) that I use in the house, yard and loan out. Strangely enough there are several of them I have used pretty hard and in ways I wouldn't use my "good" cordless tools but I have never been able to kill a tool, batteries are another story...

So based on your post it appears if I want to do this (and don't wanna wait 8hrs) and since I don't have a 18V lithium charger I will need to get the kit AND their standard LI charger...

[Greg Peterson]

According to Ryobi, it should take one hour for Li batteries to fully charge. In my experience, this is correct.

[David Weaver]

Can you find the quick charger elsewhere for some reasonable amount? If not, I'd return it. Now that the chinese and malaysian made tools have a strong foothold, there isn't much given away these days without it being a back handed slap.

[Van Huskey]

As I am understanding it the CHARGER is what is different with the 99 buck set. Ryobi has normal speed chargers like the one Brian bought for the car but they just apparently give you a SLOW charger with this kit.

[Chris Friesen]

As I am understanding it the CHARGER is what is different with the 99 buck set. Ryobi has normal speed chargers like the one Brian bought for the car but they just apparently give you a SLOW charger with this kit.

Very likely the slow charger has almost nothing in the way of smarts inside.