Looks good to me, cehoward. As many 26650 lights as you have, I think you need a double bay at a minimum! I have not seen any reviews on this one, but Manafont seems to be a fairly reputable dealer of Trustfire. If you do go for it, report back with your impressions.
On Saturday May 5th about 1:00 p.m., I placed an order with 4Sevens for their 26650 battery charger and two 26650 4000mAh batteries. At 1:00p.m. today the package arrived, wow. I don't know if this is normal or perhaps I'm accustomed to waiting for packages from Hong Kong. Either way, well done 4Sevens!
After looking everything over, I used my DMM to check the voltage of each battery and found them to be 3.75v each, basically exactly what I would have expected. I tossed one into the 4sevens charger, flipped one switch from 3.2v to 4.2v and the other switch from .5a to 1a charging current. While that one was charging, I tossed the other one into my Pila charger, which slipped right in, no fuss, no magnets and started to charge away. Shortly thereafter when the light turned green on the 4Sevens, I popped the battery out and checked the voltage, which was exactly 4.2v. Wow, I wish my Pila charged my 18650's to spec instead of 4.15v.
I checked the other 26650 on the Pila, and found it still charging and at 4.09v, removed it and tossed it in the 4sevens due to the slightly higher charging current and fantastic end voltage the charger achieves.
4Sevens boast their charger is optimized for their batteries, and I'd have to agree 100%. Unless all 26650 chargers truly fully charge these batteries to their rated 4.2v without over-charging them, I'd say this was very good money spent.
A few photos of what I purchased, excluding the Fandyfire of course.
Comes with a wall wart charger, 12v cigarette lighter adapter, and USB charger cable for other devices.
After fully charging one, I placed it in my Fandyfire HD-2010, which swallowed it right up and fit perfectly, and checked the tail cap reading. It shot up to 3.6 amps on HIGH mode and continued to rise slowly up from there, so I disconnected my DMM. That same test using a Redilast 18650-3100 yielded about 3 amps. Man do these batteries pack some serious power. Now I know why so many of you love them.
I'm curious to see when my Trustfire 5000mAh 26650's arrive from Manafont soon, if this charger will charge them exactly to 4.2v as their own brand does, or undercharge them to some degree, or slightly over-charge them. I'll have to keep an eye on it and let you all know.
If it is 1 amp per bay it would be good, if it is 1 amp in total (0.5 amp a bay) it still would be a lot quicker to use the single bay charger i reviewed.
At lest it too has a common power cord easy for us Aussie's to swap out, same for the guys in Europe And it looks like it has a female plug on the side for 12 volt cigarette lighter.
King Kong Raised Top INR26650's: Total length 68.05mm, diameter 26.33mm. Battery is a tight fit in the ML-102 charger with just a mm or two to spare. Here are photos:
Subtract thickness of the plastic disc:
Distance between contacts with no pressure:
Distance between contacts spreading as far as I can by hand (notice it's not even spread to the length of the King Kong yet):
With a 2400 mAh Trustfire Flame (cradled in very nicely):
I don't see any reason that I can't file down the rolled edges of the charger to better accommodate this raised top King Kong. I can leave enough of the rolled edge to still firmly hold an 18650 (maybe file the edges down at the top and bottom to about the same level as the middle.
First use of one of my ML102 chargers. Charged up my King Kong INR26650 and terminated at 4.19v measured with a cheap DMM. I then disconnected from the wall adaptor and plugged in my iPhone 3GS to see if it would start charging and it didn't at first. I removed the battery from the charger and placed it back in and it finally started charging.
Here's a photo showing my temporary solution to the raised top cell popping up out of the cradle (a rubber band):
I got the same reply earlier today, it would be a good buy to me if you needed a 26650 charger a big bonus would be it does not have a fixed power cord like some or an external power supply with a foreign country wall plug and maybe (looks like) if it takes cigarette lighter cord with a small male plug of the end as i have heaps of spares of both.
But i use my iCharger 106B+ with 240 volt and 12 volt plus for charging/discharging all my batteries, i plan to gift the charger i reviewed after a few more uses to make sure its OK to give to some body.
True, but 4Sevens has a disclaimer on the site stating their charger is only designed to charge their 26650's correctly. That's the only reason I mention it.