should I buy a hobby charger?

I’m thinking of buying a hobby charger but I have absolutely no clue what to look for.
I would like to:
1* Test some old and salvaged 18650 laptop cells. Most are new and unused but some are questionable (blue LG 2200mAh) since my VC2 seems to take a long time to charge them. Actually I charged them yesterday and the charger didn’t finish charging, it stayed on 99% like forever when my 3400mAh cell finished way sooner. so I just took em out although they didn’t get hot or anything. Would be nice if I could measure the Ri and capacity.

2* Most of my cels are 4.3volt so I wanne be able to charge them to 4.3V

3* Would like to be able to charge 6 or more cells simultaneous in parallel at 1A or more.

4* I got some 18V packs from power tools that I’d like to charge with it.

5* I also have 3 12V lead acid batteries of 7Ah, 90Ah and 120Ah. I use them with solar panels. I would like to recondition (if thats the right word?) them once in a while or just charge them on the mains when I don’t get enough power from the sun. Don’t know if that’s possible with a hobby charger.

6* I would connect the charger to one of the lead acid batteries, would I still need a DC boost converter, an 12V DC to 220V AC inverter (which I’d rather not use cause it’s inefficient) or can I just connect it to my mppt charge controller or straight to the battery?

My budget is around $50 but I wouldn’t mind paying more (even double that) if it’s really worth it. I could do without 4* and 5* but do I still need a hobby charger then? Please point me in the right direction or suggest something. I’d like to see some test of different chargers from reliable and skeptical persons not just a review from someone….

What kind of weird battery chemistry makes 4.3v cells?

yes you should, imo, imax b6

li ion. some 18650 4,35v but will work just fine if charged to 4,2

Oh, you mean LiHV?

yep.

that is just 1 example. http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=193

getting a hobby charger was one of the better investments. I have the imax B6 and it works as expected. very easy to use and reliable.

cool, I’ll check out the B6. Any links to tests or something?

edit: so first link I click

Don’t think I wanne spend my money on this

Hobby chargers are very universal, but that also means they are not optimized for a round cells.
This means more trouble connecting batteries, often you can only do one battery at a time and you need more button presses compared to a dedicated round cell charger.
The best round cell charger that can do anything a hobby charger can do with round cells and handles four cells at a time is the SkyRC MC3000, but it is considerable more expensive than a hobby charger and it also has a learning curve.

Maybe getting a cheaper hobby charger and a Opus BT-C3100 or LiitoKala Lii-500 round cell charger would be the optimal solution.

round cell holders are sold cheap online for pretty much any cell, single or multiple, but chargers that are made for round cells can not charge or balance cells in series. for now op does not do that, but you never know what he’ll be up to latter.
i build lights with build in none removable batteries, i use cb radio multipin connections to balance\charge cells in those lights, i use hitek x4 charger, very happy with it, it has 4 separate channels, i can charge\discharge…. 4 cells or packs at the same time, but it was $239 plus tax. at the hobby store.

Correct, but a hobby charger is rather slow if you want to check a pile of salvaged cells. Testing in series is a bad idea in that case, i.e. you can only test one cell at a time.

yes, unless it is x4 you have to do 1 cell at the time

testing cells in series is sure a bad idea.

actually if his budget was up to 100 i’d recommend skyrc mc3000 since he is interested in round cells. it can do pretty much everything hobby charger can except work with packs.
b6 are around 50, however since they are very popular, there are many fakes around, i have seen a thread either here or on cpf on fake b6’s and how to tell them apart.

Didn’t I see a 4-cell analyzing charger talked about somewhere around here? Maybe star? It had the ability to plug in a series pack as well. If I remember right.

I got this one [too?] soon after I discovered the flashlight world and cannot use it because there’s nowhere to put the batteries… A lot of searching revealed that it’s ready for lipo packs (which I had never heard about) and not for the cylindrical cells used in flashlights :frowning: So much for being a newbie…

Is there a holder/adapter that will connect to the imax B6, allowing for different cell sizes if at all possible? Cabling for doing balanced charging like the lipo packs would be ideal but is not essential.

i think the xstar VP4- charger . has 1 TEST button . 1 press and it tests 4 batteries at the same time .

tons of them available online, for regular size cells you can get holders at radio shack, however those holders come either with wires, or snap in, (9v) type connector, or simply solder connection, i’m not sure about b6 but mine x4 came with wire that had banana plug on one side, (to plug into the charger) and alligator clips on the other, so you can clip it to pretty much anything.
lipo packs already come with balance tail\wires attached, so you wont need any extra wires.

there is mh-c9000 analyzing 4 bay charger, but it does not work with packs nor with li ion cells, nicd\nimh only. i’m not aware of any other 4bay analyzing charger that works with packs and li ion cells, maybe someone else knows about such charger

He is talking about Xtar Dragon, but it only supports 3S packs.

The opus and liitokala both seem to have shortcomings and they are not able to charge to 4.3V. I have been looking into the MC3000 and it does most of the things I need it to do but I do not like the sound of “tinkering with flattop cells” as most of my cells are flattop. And

Are these issues fixed with the upgrades? I mean your test was done in 2015 so the should be fixed by now no?

Which hobby charger would you recommend, I need a reliable one if I’m gonna charge my 18V packs and lead acid batteries with it as these things are really expensive. I’m talking about at least $75 for an18V pack and my lead acid batteries are way more than that.

Pfff the more I look intoit the more desperate and confused I get. No such thing as a perfect charger I guess.

Yes and it has a few extra functions compared to the software I tested.
But you still need to mount some flattop batteries a bit high. I mostly uses GA cells and they do not have any connection problems.

I will not recommend any hobby charges, I do have a few but do not use them much. If you need information from people that uses hobby chargers, try a RC forum.