not really the very low.25 on the vp would be great to try to revive a shorted battery or to try and recondition one you drained to low beyond that the setting is too low for every day use.
for the other end of the setting .5 and 1 amp most batteries shouldnt be charged hard like the 350's would benefit from the .5 amps setting and the 2900 panasonic 650 would do fine on the 1 amp setting.
Not applicable to Xtar chargers. If they detect an unsafe condition they won't charge any battery - period. If the battery is under voltage and a fault is not detected they will apply very low current to the battery. If it can be safely brought back up to about 2.5 volts it will start a normal charge cycle. The selected charging current has no impact on an Xtar's method of detecting a reverse polarized or under current battery and how it handles them. But at least they do these two things properly - which is more than I can say for a different and inexplicably popular charger company these days.
The 250 mA charge current option is just there, if you are using really low capacity batteries like 10440's. I have some 600 mAh AW 14500's and I would rather use the 250 mA current option to charge even those.
If you want more on features of the product line you can get most of the info right from their main web site.
http://www.xtarlight.com/ Beyond that, search for technical reviews on those flashlight geek web sites if you want to get into the technical nitty gritty. One of those guys really knows how to diagnose chargers. There will be charts and graphs.
Keep in mind that any four or more bay charger in the market right now - including the one by Xtar - will only slow you down. None of these have truly independent charging channels. They all rely on rapid switching of charging current between the batteries in slot 1 and 3, 2 and 4. If you put more than two batteries in them you end up with extended charge times. It might have four slots, and it is true you can put different capacity batteries in each. But the bottom line is with an electronics sleight of hand it's only applying charging current to two of four batteries at any time. If you want fast charge times stick with two bay chargers.
Regarding the spacers, I would rather have a charger that works and has a two year warranty than a certain other brand that doesn't use spacers and the quality let's just say seems to leave a lot to be desired based on what people report here as failures. Xtar or Pila - those work and aren't getting "blown up" reports on ECF so...
First charger XP WPII 2 now two years old and still working. Second charger Xtar VP1 - no spacers needed and digital display.
