What The Indicator Lights Mean On Your Ryobi ONE+ Battery Charger
If you are someone who tends to use a lot of power tools, the Ryobi ONE+ system is a pretty terrific investment. Through their standard 18V battery, you can power everything from drills to ratchets to blowers to glue guns. The practicality of the ONE+ products cannot be overstated, which I speak of from personal experience. Because this battery can be used for so many different tools, you will most likely find yourself charging it quite a bit. This holds true even if you have multiple batteries you cycle through from your tools to your charger.
Ryobi makes a wide variety of chargers for the ONE+ batteries to meet the needs of their customers. Different chargers have different speeds with which they can charge the batteries to full capacity, and there are also several options for how many batteries can be charged at once. For some, a single charger for a single battery is enough, but for heavy users, you can also get a charger that holds six batteries simultaneously.
However, these Ryobi chargers are not made identically. Each one has its own unique properties, particularly when it comes to the LED indicator lights on them. The ONE+ battery may be standardized, but letting you know the progress of its charging certainly isn't. Let's go through the list of ONE+ chargers so you know what's going on with your batteries when they are plugged in.
Single-battery chargers
The 18V ONE+ Charger, Fast Charger, and 8A Rapid Charger are the most basic battery chargers in the line, each able to handle one battery at a time. They also have identical LED indicator lights. On the very front of the chargers, you will see two LED lights. The one on the left is a red light, and the right is green. The first indicator light you will see is the red light staying on. This means that the power for the charger is working, and it is ready to charge a battery.
Once you have inserted your battery, you can see a variety of things depending on the status of your battery. Most likely, that red light will turn off, and the green light will start flashing. This indicates that the battery is charging, and once the battery is fully charged, that light will stop flashing and just remain green. If you plug in your battery and the red and green lights are flashing at the same time, this means there is an error.
Try another battery if you receive this error warning, and if the error continues with the next battery, you'll need to get a new charger. If the new battery charges fine, then your first battery is faulty. The last thing these lights can indicate is whether the battery you have plugged in is either too hot, too cold, or has too much discharge to charge properly, and it does this by having the red light flash.
The one difference between these chargers is that the Fast and 8A Rapid Charger has an additional indication that tells you your battery is at least 80% charged by having the green light fade in and out rather than flash.
Dual Chemistry Charger
Ryobi has one more ONE+ charger on its line meant for just one battery, the Dual Chemistry Charger. Unlike the other single-battery models, this charger features three LED indicators instead of two. The top one is orange, the middle red, and the bottom green. A steady red light still means your charger is on and ready to charge. A flashing green light signals a charging battery, as well as a steady green light for a fully charged one. Now, things get a little more complicated.
For this charger, a fading green means that the battery is fully charged and the charger has gone into its energy-saving mode, a deviation from the 8A Rapid Charger. When the red light flashes, the charger evaluates the status of the battery until normal voltage is reached, and then it will go into standard charge mode. However, when the red light is fading, that means there is an error with either the battery or the charger itself.
Then there's the orange light. If the battery is too hot or too cold, this orange LED will fade in and out to indicate such. There is no scenario in which the orange light will flash or stay steady.
Two-battery chargers
Now, we move on to the chargers that handle multiple batteries at once. We'll start with the chargers meant for two batteries, the Dual-Port Simultaneous Charger and the 18V ONE+/40V Dual Platform Charger, which has one allocated slot for the standard ONE+ battery and also a 40V battery. In terms of what the lights indicate, the Dual-Port Simultaneous Charger is identical to the single-battery Fast and 8A Rapid Chargers. It only has the two red and green lights that work exactly the same way, including the fading green light to indicate that the battery has reached over 80% capacity.
Meanwhile, the 18V ONE+/40V Dual Platform Charger has a totally different set of indicators. Though it still uses the green and red two-light system, the green is now on the left, while the red is on the right. The steady ready light still signals that it's ready to charge, but when you plug in a battery, that red light will remain steady when the green light flashes to indicate it's charging. Once it's fully charged, the red light will go off in favor of a steady green light. A fading green light tells us that the charger has entered standby mode. To indicate a temperature issue, the red light will flash, and if there is an error with the battery or charger, the red light will fade in and out.
For both chargers, each port receives its individual indicator lights, so it's not an all-or-nothing proposition when you plug two batteries into the charger.
Six-battery chargers
Like the two-battery models, two different models of ONE+ chargers can handle six batteries at a time: the 6-Port Fast Charger and the 6-Port Supercharger. Also, like the two-battery models, each has its own LED indicator system. The 6-Port Fast Charger system is the one we've become very familiar with that is also available on Fast, 8A Rapid, and Dual-Port Simultaneous Chargers. It's the 6-Port Supercharger that makes some major changes.
Most notably, there is just one LED indicator per battery port on the charger. It can change to either red, green, or orange, depending on the situation. There won't be any light on unless you insert a battery. A steady red light means that it is standing by for it to be that battery's turn to charge. Once it begins charging, it will switch to a flashing green light and will turn steady when it's fully charged. A fading green light means the battery is fully charged and the charger is going into energy-saving mode.
When you get a flashing red light, it means the battery is deeply discharged and is waiting to get to normal voltage before charging can begin. Meanwhile, a fading red light signals an error with the battery or the charger. Like the single-port Dual Chemistry charger, the only orange indicator is if that color flashes orange, meaning there is a temperature issue with the battery being too hot or cold.
Once you get the hang of it, parsing out these different LED indications can become second nature. Just make sure you know which model of charger you have.