What’s frustrating about this charger is that based on HKJ’s graphs, charging an 18650 cell at 1A takes more or less the same amount of time as charging it at 0.5A (over 6 hours), and that’s because when you choose 1A, the charger immediately starts reducing charging current. Asinine.
Seriously? :|
Mmm, it's not exactly that serious, but sucks anyway.
Know what? Just remembered that a couple days after this (telling off) I did, got email from sales@liitokala.com.cn requesting me to add their Skype or whatever. Passed… 
Cheers ^:)
Got mine today. One thing I noticed so far is that it is sensitive to the power source. For example, when I connect it to my Anker 2.4A USB wall charger and set it to charge a NiMH cell at 1A, the S1 reboots itself within about a minute, and then goes back to 0.5A current. But no reboot when I feed it power from my laptop’s USB 3.0 port. Weird. My Lii-100 does not care.
I’ll do some more testing later to see if I’m getting the same Li-Ion charge curve at 1A as HKJ did.
Below is my 1A charging curve, using a button-top 30Q cell. Cell was at 3.1V when charging started; 4.19V when removed from charger. 3h:22m total charging time.
It looks better than HKJ’s curve - at least it maintains 1A for some time. Current started dropping when voltage on the charger’s display was at around 4.00V.
I’m wondering if input power has something to do with the charge curve. I should probably re-do the test, this time using that Anker USB wall charger that was causing issues when charging NiMH at 1A and see what impact (if any) it has on the Li-Ion charge curve.
It looks more like my 1A rev curve from before I damaged the charger and also the replacement charger.
6 or 60?
I’m seeing spikes up to 60 mA (0.06A), but my little DMM isn’t particularly quick to refresh, so it may not be very accurate.
Pete, it was 6ma (.006) according to my Fluke.
Edit: I do another test when I have a chance.
Looks like no matter what the price is, unless you like investigating faults (and it can be fun), you should avoid this one. The case and the display might be usable for some personal project. Looks like most of the recent chargers need serious redesign. Maybe some staff turnovers somewhere in the chain.
Either that, or they’re contracting their design work out, so they’re relying on the ability and integrity of an external organisation. That can be a problem sometimes, because there’s always a cost-cutting incentive to pick the lowest bidder who promises to achieve the desired specification, which introduces a risk that they’ll fail to deliver.
In the Wild West world of Chinese business, where some people think nothing of lying outright - see every second EBay listing for an example - that particular risk would definitely make me think twice. I’d far rather find a design house who’d proved themselves trustworthy and stick with them, instead of chasing every last penny.
I prefer my old Lii-100.
Without trickle charge, with PowerBank function.
I asked for 3nd scale of current for my 14500’s, they gave me trickle charge. :person_facepalming: