Truly outstanding work you do, appreciated by a great many! Thank you.
Every man should have a hobby!
IHMO,I don’t like idea of charger manufacturers send samples to you,since they could fine tune those chargers and use better(more expensive) components just for that review.
It would be better if BLF,CPF and other battery/charger related forum memebers send you donations,so you could buy a random chargers from random store.
The risk of that is fairly minor, it would be rather expensive to make special review version. I do sometimes get faulty chargers, i.e. they have definitely not been made for review.
A more real risk is that the charger design is silent updated at a later date.
I do not get that many chargers directly from manufacturers. Lately I have gotten many from gearbest, they do not manufacturer chargers, they only sell them.
It would not be in the manufacturer’s best interests to make special ‘review’ versions of their products. There are too many members of this forum and others that are skilled enough to run exhaustive tests as part of their reviews. As such, specially tuned products would quickly wind up with varying results between testers, with resulting bad PR for the manufacturers.
Companies that make chargers, batteries, etc would have technically competent engineers and test equipment one would think. I wonder why so many things test so poorly given that assumption (which I understand can be invalid). Another thing I’ve wondered about is why manufacturers send items to be tested by HKJ and others. Again one would think that their tests would mirror the results of others. Or they’re trying to save money by not testing their products? Which sounds silly given the cost to tool up to make things.
I know some will chime in by just saying crappy and cheap Chinese, etc products but that can’t be the only reason. I guess companies that just copy products on the cheap won’t have much in the way of engineering and testing resources.
They’re sending the charger more for review, it’s not mostly manufactures but resellers. He is well known across the web not only in lights but vape scene, anything that runs on batteries, ESP lithiums.
Its a good way to get exposure for the seller and for us users to get empirical tests.
China builds a product to a price point, (usually much lower than what we pay) it’s not always possible to achieve quality and loads of r&d. This is especially true in our ‘budget’ interests as it opens up to much smaller, garage like manufacturers.
Nothing to do with their capabilities.
No doubt that’s true. But why are some of the products so poorly made? Lack of in-house skills?
Ever heard of the term ‘caveat emptor’? [‘Let the buyer beware’] As stated above, they have a price point that they feel will sell the product, and how well it actually performs is a function of how good the designers are, and how well (cheap) it can be manufactured. Hopefully, if it is too bad, it will never see the light of day. But there are always people who only look at price and assume performance, which are these people’s lawful prey.
Not all brands has technical expertise, some are just selling relabelled stuff.
There can also be lack of knowledge, as when a well know charger brand made their first LiIon charger. It worked fine with Chinese LiIon batteries, but had some problems with Panasonic batteries.
Mostly to get exposure. On some popular YouTube channels items are not even tested or tried, the are just shown.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. Clearly one can’t assume that companies making electronics/technical devices have competent technical people 
Nope, unfortunately I think you’re right. Some probably do, some probably don’t. I’m afraid the only thing that can be safely assumed is they are trying to make a buck, which in a circular way, goes back to why these tests and reviews help us.
HKJ, I am in constant awe of the time & effort you put into you’re excellent reviews! Without you, we would be left in the dark, buying random junk batteries. Thank you! My enjoyment of modded, high performance flashlights is greatly enhanced by the work that you do.
Just imagine, one of those days HKJ will have too much old grapes and we will see a review along the lines: “These 10,000mAh continuous 100A HellFire cells are fricking awesome!!!”
I doubt it will ever happen, if I have been on grapes (or potatoes (aquavit)) I do not really want to write review and if I get too much I get rather sick (This happens before I get really silly).
I will probably get a glass of old boiled grapes today (or maybe boiled grains), it is the last day I can do it, Monday I need to work again. This also means I will slow down on my publishing rate, no review every day.
Some days later and I have added a charger to the list, finished some and tested a bit more:
And as I wrote above, no more daily reviews, today was the last day.
You are branching out into testing of chargers for automotive 12V lead acid batteries?
No, only usb chargers
HKJ, any interesting new Nitecore or XTAR chargers coming up? Something like a Nitecore SC2 or XTAR SV2 but with a proper technical display? If so, just answer “I cannot disclose such information”, otherwise answer “I cannot comment on this”.
Neither Xtar nor Nitecore tells me about their future plans.