Test/Review of Charger SkyRC MC3000

I had three, sold two to my friends and the one I kept, bay-1 failed, then bay-4 just failed after playing up and now bay-3 is playing up.

Called one of the two friends I sold one too and he is saying bay-2 is doing badly.

Would this mean that the dual-fan version may have a higher failure rate? Maybe use slightly substandard components or something?

Was my first thought. Either that or maybe they switched suppliers of some components and didn't do a good QC on them.

Hello! I am new here :). I am thinking about MC3000, it will be my first inteligent charger, I have previously one for RAM and another for NiCD/NiMH - some noname charger which charge 4 batteries but in pairs only.
MC3000 seems great for me as I like to play with things :). But I am curious to ask owners, how good is the bluetooth connection and app? I found over internet that it is bad, app does have only 2.7/5 rating on play store. Many people cannot even connect to charger. So there are compatibility issues, or were they and everythign is fixed in newer app/firmware? I have linux on my PC so connection to PC with usb is limited. I CAN reboot to windows but I prefer not to as I am using it only for connecting to my work during homeoffice days. But, if I reboot to Windows, setup the charger, does the software need to be running or I can close it and leave windows? Will the graphs be visible even later?

I need that my wif will be charging batteries from time to time (it will be mostly me) and for her, it would be great to have easy solution - place batteries and maybe press one button.
The app seems much easier to use then UI on charger, it would help a lot. BTW, can it be used by two different phones? One day my phone, another day my wife’s phone?

I am 60% for MC3000 as I can do graphs of charges and what I mostly want to do, discharge graphs of nonrechargable alkaline batteries. Other chargers will just give me capacity…
40% is on GYRFALCON ALL-88 (4 slots version is unavailable…), Miboxer C4-12 (or C8, 8 slots seems great thing for future as I want to change to rechargables nimhs and maybe lions all batteries in house, one by one), LiitoKala Lii-500. Gyrfalcons does not have discharge, do I need it if I won’t have graphs? :smiley: Do I need discharge? Is it needed to do from time to time?

Noone? GB has great sale now, MC3000 for only 75€ including shipping from Czech republic so no taxes and fast shipping.
I found that for discharge graphs, I can buy cheap skyrc iMax B6. So MC3000 might be overkill. But none other charger do what does MC3000…

Mostly I will be charging eneloops so Lii-500 will be undercharging them. Not what I want.
gyrfalcon and miboxer does not discharge but maybe I do not need it? I will charge batteries when the device says it is empty.
Miboxer costs more then Opus BT-C3100 which have trickle charge which is not good for eneloops - if I leave it charging all night so it is full at morning, it is not good.

Everything is still leading me back to MC3000 and I have only a few hours to decide. The dumb mode in MC3000 is usable? Put battery in and start charging. From videos, I see that advanced mode is enough for me, dumb would be for my wife (she is not stupid but she just do not want to use complicated electronics :D).
ALL-88 is very near in the price of MC3000, 8 slot would be nice tough.

If you buy the MC3000, make sure Gearbest is selling the latest hardware version (with two cooling fans on the bottom).

The blue tooth app worked perfectly on my iPhone, but can't comment on other phones/devices. Honestly, the blue tooth function isn't really needed, it was just a curiosity/gimmick for me.

Concerning the discharge of alkalines . . . the MC300 has the helpful "DC Reduce" function which slows down the discharge current rate of the battery towards the end of the discharge cycle, to account for the ability of alkalines to recover.

Yes, dumb mode is exactly what it implies; put battery in and start charging.

I got two MC3000's I use regularly, for a while now. Never used the BT or app stiff - just don't have a need.

Gearbest says it is newest revision with two fans (and that there are no other changes in this revision to previous one - only the fans, so I hope it is really newest). A lot of people were asking them which revision they offer. On the photos, it is newest revision.
I like the idea of app in phone (even when I mostly use phone for calls and SMS, I am not appcollector :slight_smile: ) because it is much easier to setup the charger. But from videos, the app does not offer all the options…

EDIT (add): I had no idea that there is “DC Reduce” function! That seems really interesting. Question is, when I test about 20 different alkalines, if I will still need all these functions of MC3000… I just want to test them because all the test over internet are on different batteries, not available in my country. And there are no test in my country on batteries. I am just curious about this and planned to do it with arduino+raspberry pi and some software and hardware :D. A lot work which I am postponing for two years now…

Cool, so my wife can use dumb mode and even sometimes I will when I do not have time to set all the thing it offer in other modes…

Thank you, good to know it is used, all I can found was usually problems. That is why I asked for owners :D. There might be ten thousands of happy users but only a few will do good review. 1% of users might have problems and they all do bad reviews :).

I am thinking again to buy two chargers, Lii-500 for lions and Opal BT-C2000 for nimhs. Cheaper then CM3000 and easier to use…

Dunno what the complaints are all about, but I find the MC3000 easy to use. The features are unmatched. I was getting tired of buying decent pricey chargers and getting a full charge of 4.15V to 4.17V. It's a roll of the dice because they are all spec'd to +/- 0.05V. Plus I love the 3 amp feature, so charging the 5500 cells is not a problem to do quickly. Believe me, I spent more than $200 on chargers I don't use, or died. I find the investment in the MC3000's worth it.

when doing a discharge on 4 cells ,the newer 2 fan version runs 7*C cooler than the 1 fan version.

Gearbest version seems the newest, two fans present :).

I has a lot of options which I will never need. Original software does not connect to charger in linux (and running by wine) but DataExplorer works! I do not know how to export image of graph in DataExplorer, only screenshoot it… :confused:

The beeping of charger can be disabled? I have disabled it in menu but it still beep on some occasions (lost connection when I remove battery during action and others). Beeping cannot be disabled everywhere?
I already found out that NiMH in chinese solar light should be 600mAh but in reality is only 1/10 of it :(. Similir light, bought locally with shop branding on the box has 300mAh and they are bigger, was able to charge them up to 400mAh, then I stopped it. Still only ~1.45V.

Wut. 60mAh of of the capacity? That’s really bad.

And yeah, it’s problematic. Most charger/USB tester software doesn’t run on Linux distros, since Windows is even more prevalent in China compared to other OSes.

1,45V end charge voltage is perfectly fine.

Yeah :D. And I was surprised how bad that solar light holds light :). DataExplorer is fine for me, I have to setup everything on charger but that is not a problem, I though it will be harded. Only if I want to see something during charging or after, it is harder to remember when and which button to press to do/view something. Only downside of DataExplorer is that it has got a lot of options in UI and no guide which will tell beginner what it is and how to do, for example, image export of graph. It even seems that it can read the program from charger, has some option to name the programs but it loose it when started next time. So I am not sure about it :).

Also, bluetooth connection works great, pity that application has it’s own programs! That should be fixed :/.

I will try that chinese 60mAh again with charger’s refresh program, I did it manually before. But it stopped with default charge settings (after discharged to 1.0V or 0.9V) with 5x mAh always… Very bad battery. Will be exchanged for eneloop soon :).

I would like to put some more info out there about this charger. I have had it for a few months and so far it is everything I could have wanted!
-I will be posting a review video on youtube I was wondering if there were things I should address?
-I think I will be talking alot about how you use the charger instead of trying to list what all it can do, like the differences in the FW1.14 UI modes dummy VS advanced and the PC/phone apps.
-I will mention data retention like bumping the cell or a power cut.
-then I will tear it down and show the slight changes to HW2.2 vs 1.0

im not doing this for the views, just to share things I am passionate about, ill be referring people to the forum for sure, hopefully it becomes more popular this next year and we get better PC software and mobile apps.

That’s good, wanted to know what’s the difference between HW2.2 vs 1.0…

That would be great! I got two of these for a year+ or so and love them! It's amazing how amps these things can put out. Spec says 50W output, and I've done up to 10 amps across 4 cells. Love that I can tweak the amps according to the cells I'm charging. I use 2.8A charge for the big 26650's.

Hey all my review is uploaded: Sky RC MC3000 Review and Teardown - YouTube

here is the album for the pics of the new board and heatsink: (I can post them in here if you want I figure linking out is more efficient)

The MC3000 is on sale now at NKON for 72 €.

Cool! Ordered one… still have the original version that I had to hit with a higher voltage power supply to get it out of a low voltage (power supply) input fault. It’s working reliably again but I don’t trust it, got the new for the day it will go to the light!

Got this one too a week ago. Overall I’m happy, but for this price I’d point a few cons (but not deal breakers):

  • 21700 fit just barely. I really have to fiddle with Samsung 40T to place them in. Since it was released 5 years ago I assume they just got lucky they made slots long enough
  • Metal sliders are not too smooth - you need to learn how to pull them or they get stuck on you
  • Buttons are rattling in their slots and make very loud click sounds. I use mostly Phone app since buttons are so unpleasant to use
  • The power brick has notable PWM hissing sound. I can hear it even from 1 meter away, hence this charger never sits on my desk
  • The pin on the DC socket seems to be thicker than the standard DC5.5 so I can’t use it with my other power supplies - their plug doesn’t fit into MC3000 Socket.

The smartphone app works perfectly on my Samsung S10, but I wish it had a bit more features to it:

  • Selected slots are part of the program, but I’d rather to select slots when starting a program.
    For now I have a program for every battery model but have to edit them often just to select the proper slots
  • I’d like to have history of my charging/discharging/etc. sessions - as it is now, when I remove the battery the data is gone
  • It will be great to have graphs zoomable - they are very tiny as they are now

(For the reference, I’m just a newbie hobbyist and my other chargers are Lii-500s and Nitecore UMS2)