Last year I reviewed the original Olight Ostation X battery charger and liked the concept, although I ran into a few frustrating issues. Now Olight is back with the Ostation 2 Pro, which adds AAA support, a built-in display, lithium-ion compatibility, and several other upgrades. I put it through a variety of tests to see if it really improves on the original.
Where to Purchase
You can pick up the Olight Ostation 2 Pro on Amazon at this link. The Olight lithium batteries compatible with this unit are here.
Olight Ostation 2 Pro Review
The Olight Ostation 2 Pro is an automatic rechargeable battery charger that can hold up to 12 AA and 12 AAA batteries. Instead of placing batteries into individual charging slots, you simply drop them into the appropriate compartment and let the machine handle the rest. Polarity doesn’t matter, so there is no need to worry about which direction the batteries are facing.
AA batteries are loaded into the rear section and AAA batteries go into the front, so you do have to separate the two sizes before dropping them in. The charger then detects the batteries, charges them in pairs, and deposits them into their respective storage compartments when finished. Any batteries it considers bad or un-chargeable are sent to a separate compartment.
One of the biggest improvements over the original Ostation X is the addition of a display on the front. The original relied heavily on the Olight app for detailed information, while the Ostation 2 Pro lets me see charging progress directly on the unit. There is still an optional app, and I used it during testing, but I appreciate that I no longer have to rely on it.
The app does offer a more visually appealing representation of the charging process and provides information such as charging percentage, charging time, and the number of batteries processed. However, I generally prefer products that don’t require an app for basic operation, so the new built-in display is a significant upgrade for me.
For my first test, I loaded the charger with new Olight AA and AAA rechargeable batteries. Some had been discharged while others still had a significant charge remaining. I intentionally loaded them without paying attention to polarity, and the Ostation handled them without a problem.
One thing I noticed right away is that battery detection isn’t particularly fast. It often took around a minute for batteries to appear on the display, and in one later test a AAA battery took more than two minutes to register. It wasn’t a major issue, but it sometimes made me wonder whether the charger had actually detected what I had put into it.
Two heavily discharged AA lithium-ion batteries took about two hours to charge. The charger processes batteries two at a time, and one quirk is that both batteries in a pair must finish before they are released into the storage compartment. If one battery is nearly full and the other is heavily discharged, the first battery will remain there until its partner is finished.
I also tested a collection of older NiMH batteries that had been sitting unused for several months. These charged in roughly 30 to 60 minutes, depending on their remaining charge. More importantly, none of them were incorrectly rejected.
That was particularly important because false battery rejection was my biggest complaint with the original Ostation X. During my previous review, that model sometimes sent working rechargeable batteries into the bad battery compartment.
To push the new model further, I went around my house and found some of the oldest rechargeable batteries I still had in active use. Even these were recognized and charged without being rejected. Based on everything I tested, it appears Olight has made a substantial improvement in this area.
I even performed a direct comparison with the original Ostation X. I took 11 NiMH AA batteries that the Ostation 2 Pro had successfully charged and put them into the original charger. The older model rejected three of them. That reinforced my impression that the new model does a much better job identifying usable batteries.
There is one limitation regarding lithium-ion batteries. The Ostation 2 Pro can charge Olight’s own compatible lithium-ion AA batteries, but it does not support lithium-ion rechargeable batteries from other brands. I tested two third-party lithium-ion AA batteries and both were immediately sent to the rejected battery compartment. For NiMH batteries, however, the charger can accept other brands.
Another new feature is a pair of magnetic charging connections hidden behind a side panel. These can be used with compatible Olight flashlights, allowing the Ostation to double as a charging station for those products. Since I already own an Olight flashlight that uses the company’s magnetic charging system, I found this to be a convenient addition.
There are a few things I would still like to see improved. In addition to the slow battery detection, all of the charging statistics reset when the Ostation loses power. I unplugged the unit during testing and discovered that both the charger and app had reset their battery counts and other information. It would be useful if the app maintained a permanent charging history that could be cleared manually.
The battery storage system is also a little less elegant than the original Ostation X. On the older model, I could press a lever to dispense charged batteries. With the Ostation 2 Pro, I have to pull out separate AA and AAA trays. It works fine, but I preferred the original dispensing mechanism.
Overall, I think the Olight Ostation 2 Pro is a meaningful improvement over the original, and sells for about the same price I paid for that model. Adding AAA support, a built-in display, Olight lithium-ion compatibility, and magnetic flashlight charging makes it considerably more versatile. Most importantly, it appears to have addressed the false bad-battery detection that bothered me so much with the previous model.
It’s still not perfect. Third-party lithium-ion support would make it more useful, the battery detection process could be faster, and I’d like to see charging history retained in the app. Even so, this is a better and more capable version of an unusual battery charger that I already found myself continuing to use after reviewing the original.
Video Review
Check out my 2026 review of the Ostation 2 Pro and below that is my 2025 review of the older Ostation X.