Dang,
Hope it wasn’t me. I’m offended that everyone is always offended about something. I bet someone owes me something for something. Now I’m angry. See how this works.
Just to stay on subject so I don’t get my face bit off. I really use my Lii-500 a lot. I have 2 of them. With the couple of added features on the new unit, it will make this a very popular charger especially for the price.
I ordered the 500S based on the information on the Liitokala website that indicated it did include the 300mA charging current option, like the old model. I later emailed Liitokala to ask if that information was correct, when I found the instruction manual and saw it did not say the 300mA option is available in the new model. The answer from Emily indicates they eliminated the 300mA option.
I was at first upset about the incorrect information on their website, until I realized that my 16340 cells have between 650 and 750mAH capacity, and my AAA cells have a minimum of 750. A 500mA charging current will be fine for those cells, and I’ll charge my 18650’s at 1A. The cell manufacturers say a quality cell will remain perfectly healthy and maintain its full number of charging cycles when charged at up to 0.8C in a quality charger, and even above that rate in most cases. I don’t think I need to worry, given that 500mA will be below 0.8C for my smallest cells, and I don’t re-charge my small cells often. And this charger has very good over-heating and over-charging protection, as well.
Warning: off-topic, but still relevant to BG purchases.
Yea, I’ve noticed this new “behavior” just over the past week or two. It’s ridiculous and probably not even profitable, since it gives customers a shock when they see the checkout price and they may simply cancel the order out of annoyance.
I added a $12 item to my cart and the default shipping charge was over $14. Do they think that such a tactic will sell more products? I felt slightly angry and highly insulted, which I wouldn’t consider to be an effective business strategy.
This is hopefully a programming or configuration error, but if not then it’s just Banggood being Banggood.
The flip side is they probably have just as many newbies who order and expect their item in 2-3 days. In those cases defaulting to faster shipping would reduce a lot of customer service issues.
On that topic, for those who already own Lii-500 and are now getting the Lii-500S, battery direction has been reversed. But at least the charger is supposed to have reverse insertion protection.
I’m wondering about the 3 operating modes: “CHARGE, DISCHARGE and TEST modes”.
I don’t suppose we’ll get an answer unless someone finally gets the unit to test.
To recap, the old Lii-500 Engr has Charge, Fast Test and Nor Test.
“Charge” does what it says: charge to Full.
“Fast Test” will discharge the battery to Empty (around 2.80v for the Lii-500), then will start charging to Full, measuring the Charged Capacity along the way.
“Nor Test” will first charge the battery to Full, then will Discharge the battery to Empty (around 2.8v), and report the Discharged Capacity; as a final step, the Lii-500 will also fully charge the battery after it has fully discharged the battery (the user can remove the battery any time after the Discharged Capacity is shown, if he doesn’t need the battery charged to Full,)
For the Lii-500S:
“Charge” likely works similarly: charge to Full (4.20v for Li-Ion)
“Discharge” = I wonder what this means — is it another name for the previous “Fast Test”, or can it possibly work like the “Discharge” function of the Opus BT-C3100? (ie. discharge battery from whatever state (can be in “not Full” state, at least for the Opus BT-C3100) and then display the Discharged Capacity?
“Test” = I would presume this works the same as the previous “NOR Test” = first charge to Full, then Discharge to a pre-set Empty voltage (probably around 2.8v), report the measured capacity, then Charge back up to Full.