Letus Helix Jr Charger Dies - After 18 Months Light Use
27/09/17 16:41
Unfortunately, my original Letus Helix Jr's. "Juicebox" (i.e. Battery) Charger died just before an important shoot about 10 days ago.
Whilst investigating this I saw a review on the Letus website from another user who's charger had also failed after a relatively short period of time. Luckily, the two (smaller) Letus batteries I have still had about 50% charge in them and this was enough for me to get all the gimbal shots I needed. I then ordered a replacement charger from Letus and it arrived within 5 days (I could have paid another $10 and had express delivery but since the minimum delivery charge was already a whopping $91.59 I did not). The new charger was $60.
I also decided to buy yet another small battery (err, I mean Juice Box)…not that I have every been caught short but I thought I might as well get some additional value from that huge minimum cost shipping charge. The extra small Juice Box was $125 - so I ended up paying $276.59 to Letus. I knew that I would have to pay UK import charges (VAT and "UPS Brokerage" charges) when the shipment arrived and in the end I paid UPS £56.37 for those. So, you can see this little exercise was not cheap!
Whilst investigating this I saw a review on the Letus website from another user who's charger had also failed after a relatively short period of time. Luckily, the two (smaller) Letus batteries I have still had about 50% charge in them and this was enough for me to get all the gimbal shots I needed. I then ordered a replacement charger from Letus and it arrived within 5 days (I could have paid another $10 and had express delivery but since the minimum delivery charge was already a whopping $91.59 I did not). The new charger was $60.
I also decided to buy yet another small battery (err, I mean Juice Box)…not that I have every been caught short but I thought I might as well get some additional value from that huge minimum cost shipping charge. The extra small Juice Box was $125 - so I ended up paying $276.59 to Letus. I knew that I would have to pay UK import charges (VAT and "UPS Brokerage" charges) when the shipment arrived and in the end I paid UPS £56.37 for those. So, you can see this little exercise was not cheap!
Interestingly, the new charger Letus sent me (picture above, on the right) is MUCH better than the original, now no longer functioning one (on the left). This is because it is a more conventional "brick type" charger which allows me to plug a common UK power lead into it. As you can see, the old charger was a 2 pronged "direct into US socket" type design - which meant I had to use a shaver adapter (and it sometimes blew the 1 Amp mini fuses that these have in them since it can draw upto 2.5A).
Hopefully, I won't now have any more issues with this new charger. At well over £300, has been a rather expensive exercise just to be able to charge the bespoke Letus batteries again - but at least I'm up and running once more.