I bought a charger recently off of amazon for 18350s and I’m pretty unhappy with it. I’m using it on vapcell batteries and it may be overcharging them idk. The final voltage is like 4.40 (read from a fluke). It has other issues as well, like the screen resetting all of the sudden.
I need a good charger for the vapcell 18350’s (are they IMR cells and does that even matter?). Also I need the charger to power off a usb cable since I will have it in my work van. Thanks in advance!
One other thing…I like being able to see the parameters on the charger screen like voltage and mAh etc.
I have 4 Xtar XP-1 Hummingbird single bay, multi-chem USB chargers. They’re good for 14500/AA sizes and below and have 250mA and 500mA rates, so good for 10440s/16340s.
I also have the Xtar MC-1+ USB charger, which does most cells, is li-ion only and has 500mA and 1A charging rates, which is a little high for the smaller cells listed above. Still for 18650 type cells, it’s faster.
I also have the Liitokala 100 and 202 USB chargers (2 each) and these are neat, multi-chem, multi-voltage USB chargers, both 1 bay and 2 bays respectively.
All of the above can be had for under $10.
I have a VC-4 and while nice, it’s a little finicky regarding the power supply.
I would consider the VC-2 Plus Master, but some of the other ones do a bit more, or are lighter, easily carried.
500mA is fine for the 18350, right in its sweet spot.
I need to get a couple of ANTs just to have. I went to Lumens (formerly Xtar Direct) and they’re shutting down all consumer sales by the end of the month. Not much left to choose from. Reminds me of the two SEARs stores I closed down earlier in the year.
The vultures have come, the vultures have feasted and the vultures have left.
It seems like the xtar stuff is in the same category of ‘cheap and lithium-anything’ but I’m guessing that since Mountain Electronics sells them they are probably reliable…am I right???
A good practice with any charger or light for that matter— Verify it stops charging at 4.2v - 4.22 is acceptable—and with lights make sure they.re not draining the cells too low—I like 3 v —— I recently bought some Soshine charger/USB cases — 1 of them drained the cells to 2.4v—unacceptable
No, these are not IMR cells. Right now there are very few actual IMR cells in the market, the energy density of such chemistry is the lowest of all of the “4.2+V max” chemistries. However, people's ignorance seems to make marketing people think using the label IMR in their wraps is good for sales or something (if you think “IMR” means “high discharge” and/or “safe”, these could be the reasons). OEM cell manufacturers never claim bullshit in their wraps but of course Vapcell is a rewrapper, not a manufacturer.
Now this is crazy—- need a meter to check the charger because the charger could be junk—Now we need a meter to check the meter because it could be junk—- Can we get a Calibration buy going so we can check our Not So Good Stuff —— :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming:
You should bookmark HKJ’s site and read through it if you haven’t already done so, a hundred times. Click on ‘name’ over the name column and it’ll organize things in alphabetical order, for easier viewing.
Xtar has been at the top, or near the top, for a good half dozen years. Sure…they make a stinker from time to time, but they are very safe and do a great job charging up our stuff.
Chris
Not “cheap” as in ‘made by Moo-Shu-Pork battery charger company.’
I use my flukes everyday at my job so I know they are accurate. However, I did also read the voltage with my BK Precision meter as well
Yes I think it more likly for me to get struck by lightning than for my fluke meter to read incorrect voltage. The thing that tipped me off to the voltage issue was that at first the charger would display the voltage and show it changing over time. Then the screen would stay pegged at 4.21 exactly every time. I thought this was weird so I looked into it and whenever the charger was showing fluctuating voltage it was accurate within a 0.05 of a volt but whenever it was fixed at 4.21 it was actually rising up to 4.40V :person_facepalming:
