REVIEW – Somewhere between the flashlights, a video doorbell, a couple of outdoor cameras, a small army of IoT gadgets that all apparently run on AAs, and a smart lock on the front door that acts personally offended every time its battery dips, I stopped keeping track of how many batteries I buy in a given month. Regular rechargeable AAs never quite solved this, because standard NiMH cells put out 1.2V instead of the 1.5V alkaline gives you, and enough of my gadgets are picky enough about that difference to complain early and often. XTAR sent over the L8 Pro Smart Charger along with two 4-packs of their CLR 4300 batteries, which are 1.5V Li-ion cells built to output true alkaline-style voltage but recharge hundreds of times. Eight batteries, eight slots, so I filled every bay on day one and have been rotating them through the needy gadgets in my life for the last month, front door included.
Note: The L8 Pro Smart Charger and CLR 4300 batteries were sent to me by XTAR at no cost. They had no editorial input and did not see this review before it published.
Photos and video by Gregory Morley.
The Basics
The pitch here is simple even if the chemistry isn’t. A CLR 4300 looks and installs exactly like a standard AA, but inside it’s a lithium-ion cell paired with a small voltage regulator that holds the output at a steady 1.5V for almost the entire discharge curve, instead of the slow, sagging decline you get from NiMH or the one-way trip you get from alkaline. The L8 Pro is the charger built to feed a house full of those, with 8 slots that each read and charge their own AA or AAA battery, so you can mix Li-ion and NiMH, full cells and half-dead ones, in any combination without pairing them up. The one thing that isn’t independent per slot is the mode: CHG, DisCHG, and Refresh, the three states the LCD actually cycles through, apply to the whole charger at once, not to individual bays.
What You Get
- XTAR L8 Pro 8-slot smart charger
- USB-C charging cable
- Quick start guide
- 2 packs of XTAR 1.5V AA CLR 4300 batteries, 4 per pack, 8 total
By the Numbers
- Charger price: $29.99
- Battery price: $47.99 for an 8-pack ($6.00 per battery)
- Slots: 8 bays, AA or AAA, Ni-MH and 1.5V Li-ion mixed freely, though the charging mode applies to the whole unit rather than per slot
- Charger input: USB-C, 18W recommended
- Charging algorithm: CVSA Technology for Ni-MH cutoff, three-stage TC/CC/CV for Li-ion
- Modes: CHG (normal charge, default standby), DisCHG (single discharge-charge cycle, called Quick Refresh in the manual, Ni-MH only), Refresh (up to four discharge-charge cycles, called Smart Deep Refresh in the manual, Ni-MH only), plus Smart Low-Voltage Activation to revive over-discharged batteries and Ni-MH repair on any inserted cell
- Display: LCD showing per-slot status
- Battery capacity: 2700mAh / about 4300mWh per cell
- Battery cycle life: 1200-plus recharges
- Battery operating range: -20C to 60C
Design & Build
The L8 Pro is a low, wide little brick with a screen on top and eight slots lined up like a tiny parking garage. It feels solid for the price, the spring contacts have real tension, and the LCD is bright enough to read from across the kitchen counter, which matters when you’re the only one who’s ever going to check on it. It lives on a shelf by itself now, same as pretty much everything else in this apartment. The batteries themselves are the more impressive trick. Pick one up and it feels like a normal AA, maybe a hair heavier, and it drops into a remote or a flashlight exactly like one. There’s no adapter, no weird shape, nothing that tips off a device that something electrochemically different just happened to it.
Charging and the Extra Modes
Day-to-day charging is dead simple: drop batteries in, plug in a USB-C cable, watch the LCD count them up through the three charging stages. What I actually spent time testing over the month was the extra modes, because they’re the reason this charger costs more than a bare-bones one. DisCHG (the manual calls it Quick Refresh) runs a battery down and back up once, a nice way to shake the memory-effect cobwebs out of a cell that’s been sitting around doing nothing, not unlike me most Saturdays. Refresh (Smart Deep Refresh in the manual) is the deeper version, adaptively cycling a tired battery through up to four discharge-charge loops based on how far gone it is, to claw back capacity, and I ran it on a couple of old NiMH AAs that had been rattling around a drawer for years. Both refresh modes are Ni-MH only; load Li-ion cells and pick either one and the charger just runs a normal charge on them instead. The old NiMH pair didn’t come back to factory-new, but they picked up a noticeably longer runtime in the mouse afterward, more than I expected from cells that old. The best trick was automatic, not a mode I had to pick: I had a battery in that same drawer that read dead on a multimeter, the kind of cell you’d normally just recycle, and the moment I dropped it into a slot the L8 Pro’s own Smart Low-Voltage Activation kicked in and coaxed it back to a full charge instead of throwing an error. I loaded up all 8 slots at once with a mix of the new CLR 4300 cells and a couple of old NiMH stragglers on a normal charge, and each slot showed its own progress on the LCD without waiting on the others. The one real catch: the special modes are unit-wide, not per slot. If you want to run DisCHG or Refresh, that mode applies to everything loaded at the time, so a battery that needs deep conditioning and a battery that just needs a normal top-up can’t run their different modes side by side in the same session.
Living With the Batteries
The constant 1.5V output shows up in daily life more than I expected from a spec sheet number. One of the outdoor cameras used to start sending duller, more washed-out night shots a couple weeks into a set of NiMH batteries as the voltage sagged, and with the CLR 4300 cells the images stayed consistent night after night until the camera finally reported them low, all at once, instead of fading out slowly. The flashlight in my truck stayed at full brightness instead of that familiar half-power dim that used to creep in around week two. Even the wireless mouse, which isn’t exactly a demanding piece of equipment, felt snappier for longer before the low-battery light showed up. But the real test was the Yale Assure Lock 2, the keypad deadbolt on the front door. It used to flash a low-battery warning on the keypad every few weeks like clockwork, and a month into a set of CLR 4300 cells it hasn’t complained once. Nobody else in the apartment is fighting me for freshly charged batteries, so the L8 Pro spends its life quietly refilling whatever I pulled last, which might be the most functional relationship I’ve got going right now.
What Could Be Better
The L8 Pro doesn’t come with a wall adapter, just the USB-C cable, so you’re borrowing a charger brick or a power bank to actually run it, a minor annoyance the first time you unbox it. The modes are unit-wide rather than per slot, so you can’t run DisCHG or Refresh on one battery while another charges normally in the same session, which matters if you’re trying to revive an old cell and top up fresh ones at the same time. And while the CLR 4300 cells are genuinely good batteries, at $6.00 a cell they cost meaningfully more than a basic NiMH pack, so replacing every AA-eating gadget in the apartment at once is a real expense, not an impulse buy.
Watch the Review
Quick Questions
Q: Do the CLR 4300 batteries actually output a full 1.5V like alkaline?
A: Yes, that’s the whole point of the CLR 4300 cells. Unlike standard NiMH rechargeables that put out 1.2V, these hold a steady 1.5V for almost the entire discharge curve, which is why voltage-sensitive gadgets stop complaining once you swap them in.
Q: Can each of the 8 slots run a different mode at the same time?
A: No. The mode you pick, CHG, DisCHG, or Refresh, applies to the whole charger at once, not per slot. You can still mix battery chemistries and charge levels across slots under a normal charge, but you can’t run DisCHG or Refresh on one battery while another charges normally in the same session.
Q: Does the L8 Pro come with a wall adapter?
A: No, it only includes a USB-C cable, so you’ll need to supply your own charger brick or power bank to actually run it.
Q: Can the L8 Pro revive a battery that reads completely dead?
A: In this test, yes. Dropping a battery that read dead on a multimeter into a slot triggered the charger’s Smart Low-Voltage Activation instead of throwing an error, no mode selection needed, though results will vary by how far gone the cell actually is.
Final Thoughts
If you have even a couple of gadgets that get cranky about battery voltage, an outdoor camera, a good flashlight, anything that likes to complain before it’s actually empty, the L8 Pro and the CLR 4300 batteries fix that problem cleanly and keep fixing it for a long time. The charger’s extra modes turned out to be more than a gimmick, reviving a battery I’d already mentally written off, and the constant 1.5V output is a real, noticeable upgrade over standard rechargeables in anything voltage-sensitive. It’s a bigger up-front cost than a bag of basic NiMH AAs, but if you’re tired of babysitting sagging batteries, this is the setup that stops asking for attention.
Price: $29.99 for the charger, $47.99 for an 8-pack of batteries
Where to buy: Amazon or direct from XTAR
What I like: True constant 1.5V output, each slot tracks its own charge status, DisCHG, Refresh, and Smart Low-Voltage Activation actually work, feels solid for the price
What I don’t: No wall adapter included, modes apply to the whole charger rather than per slot, Li-ion AAs cost more than basic rechargeables
You can also buy direct from XTAR: the L8 Pro charger and the CLR 4300 batteries.
