Bought 5pc lot for $2.71 here: 5PCS 5V Micro USB 1A 18650 Lithium Battery Charging Board Charger Module | eBay. They come with Tpower chips which supposed to be decent. Came to EU in 2-3 weeks.
Has anyone done a test on “TPOWER” marked chips?
HKJ has only tested the NanJing Top Power chip (with logo).
I have used one of those with battery protection for a couple of months, and i have been very satisfied.
But today i accidentally connected a 10440 in backwards and in some hour it sucked my poor little 10440 down to 0,8v 
when i realized what i had done i disconnected it & it rather quickly recovered to 2.75v & then i started to charge it to see if it was recoverable, but after a bunch of hours on the charger it only got up to 3.08v so i will recycle it.
It doesn’t beak the charger to connect it wrong but it can discharge the battery low enough to break it if you don’t catch it in time
Yuck…high current reverse polarity drain…ewwww
Definitely need HKJ to review those ASAP!
Any idea the max current that can flow thru the battery protect IC…real world measurements?
Yeah i was surprised, if it wouldn’t have this weakness it would be perfect for a cheap robust charger board that have at least some foolproofness in built.
Sorry i can’t give any insight on the battery protect IC, I really don’t understand the circuit well enough to know how to measure it, best to leave that up to HKJ.
There is a rather extensive youtube review of this board, but i don’t remember how i found it……
I have good news & bad news……
It seems i was wrong, the reason i couldn’t charge up the 10440 i though was killed, was the “with protection usb board” was broken.
I tried to charge another 10440 today & found that it didn’t charge at all anymore. So i reflowed another board for 10440 charging and now even the supposedly broken 10440 is charging fine, i have charged it up right now to 4v before i started it had recovered to 3.35v, i don’t know if it will get up to 4.2v in reasonable time & hold a charge yet, that will take some more time to figure out.
Last time i used a 10k ohm sense resistor but that would take forever so this time i used a 5,6k ohm for (i believe, someone with better math skills please correct me if i am wrong ;)) ~235mA charging, that is a much more reasonable speed, still safe but in almost half the time.
I must have killed the first board when i left it connected the wrong way for a longer time last time, the reason i make that distinction is i know i have quickly accidentally connected it wrong before, for just a second or 2 but that didn’t beak it.
More bad news the second USB charger board with protection is only charging up to 4.10-4.11v……… and i thought 4.18-4.19v was bad as low as 4.10v is sad on a tiny 10440 battery when the Vf on the XP-L can be up to 3.8-3.9v, that means it start out dim and only getting dimmer & i usually switch battery before it comes to 3.75v rested.
I will try to reflow the other main component from the now dead board that was at least charging to 4.19v i hope that component still works, if it doesn’t that would at least explain what broke 
so win win. I need to order some more of these now anyway.
Potentially dumb question: can two of these chargers be used in parallel to charge a single-cell more quickly? I know there are single boards with dual Tp4056.
Yes they can. But it should be powered by only one usb power supply. Two power supplies might not play well together.
Sweet! That’s great news. Now I just need to find a source for the genuine article.
I thought I ordered this one months ago but apparently not. I have no idea if its genuine or not but the picture has the correct symbol on it and its not cheap.
http://aud.dx.com/product/tp4056-1a-li-ion-battery-charging-module-blue-4v-8v-961215797#.Vhh5rfmqpBd
I have some i got off ebay a while ago but I put them aside as soon as I saw they didn’t have the right symbol. I just took them out for a quick test. Other than termination voltage, what else can I test for to see if they’re usable? Or would I be better off just getting some new ones from Richard?
Current at beginning and at a couple points near the end.
And checking that current is zero when the done led lights up.
But still, I’ve seen someone report that their 4056 clone randomly started overcharging even tho it was originally fine.
I’ve tested mine and both stop reliably around 4.195v.
Next question: with a different resistor, can these be run at 1.2amp?
They should already be set to the max. How much current are you getting?
It’s set for 1amp and that’s about what I’m getting. I just didn’t know if it was possible to “set” it for a little more like we do with drivers that use sense resistors
1A is probably already the max. The original chip that HKJ tested did 850ma. What value set resistor is on your boards?
on the datasheet it says the max rated is 1200ma (if I’m reading that right) but only offers configuration directions for 1000ma. I might see what a 1k resistor does…
It would be nice to have a slightly different layout with room for a multi position switch and indicator diodes for a few other output currents.
I’m not making a new PCB (though I might in the future) but im currently piecing together a little charger that uses 2 of these boards in parallel. My hope is to have one at 800ma and one at 1200ma. I’ll have a switch to toggle if I’m just using one board or both. 800ma for 14500’s and 18350’s, 2amps for 18650’s.