| Joined: | Wed Apr 11th, 2012 |
| Location: | Denham, United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 293 |
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Mmmm interesting, but makes sense...A clear case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
I guess by 'Travel Converters' they mean voltage adjusting converters rather than plug pin adaptors.
As far as I know all Nikon chargers are multi voltage self adjusting, you can use them at any voltage from 100V to 240V and at 50 or 60 Hz, you don't NEED an adaptor for the voltage and if you do use one it may confuse the charger because it may loose it's reference voltage and end up either under or over charging the battery
My MH-22 is dual voltage and so are my MH-21, MH-18a and MH-24 chargers. They are all self adjusting for the AC input. Which will be why the manual says, effectively, don't double adjust.
Also it's possible the 'travel converter' is just a resistor which will only give the correct voltage for a given sample load, all other loads will be wrong voltage.
All current Nikon chargers are multi voltage. They accept input voltages between 100V and 240V at frequencies of 50Hz or 60Hz. This range covers just about every country on earth. Voltage converters are simply transformers and shouldn't make any difference but they are completely unnecessary, why would you bother?
Inverters are a different matter, the output from a cheap inverter, such as might be used in a car, isn't a very accurate sine wave and may be far from "clean". Such a "dirty" output will cause the charger to get hot and may result in internal damage.
Reference voltage? Where did that come from I wonder? Chargers use voltage regulators and don't really care what the input voltage might be the regulator manages the output without reference to the input. This is after all why one uses a regulator in the first place.
The chargers don't "self adjust" they are designed to produce the required output irrespective of the input, it could be 120V, 150V, 200V or anywhere in between. The device is actually a switched mode power supply and will supply the rated output even if the input changes while in use.
You might also note that it says "No user serviceable parts inside". One of my MH22s had a problem which proved to be very "user serviceable" the lug to which the switch panel was attached had broken. Some epoxy putty soon restored normal operation. Generally however, leave the inside well alone.