Review / Test: Fenix ARE-C1 Charger

Batteries and Chargers Chargers
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Charger Fenix ARE-C1




Fenix made flashlight for a couple of years, lately they have also started on LiIon batteries and now a charger.





The charger comes in a blister pack.



The box contained the charger, a car adapter, a power cable and a instruction manual.



The charger list its specifications on the front of the charger.



The plus connection is slightly raised, this means that the charger can be used with flat top batteries. The minus connection is a spring, this means spacers for anything but 18650 length batteries.



The charger has a polarity marking in each slot.



Power can be supplied from the supplied mains adaptor or from a car adapter.





The charger can handle 69 mm long batteries including flat top cells.



Measurements

Without power connected, the charger draws up to 2mA from a battery.
With power connected the charger draws 1mA from a fully charged battery.
The charger is slow at detecting detecting voltage changes when charging, up to 50 seconds.
The measuring pulses will first occur when the battery voltage is above 3.8 volt.
Below 0.55 volt the charger will not supply any current, i.e. it cannot reset a protection.
Above 0.55 volt the charger will charge with full current.
The charger will restart charging if the battery drops below 4.0 volt, after power loss or when a battery is put into the charger.
Two batteries in the charger will not change the charge current, i.e. the channels are truly independent.
Because each channel is independent, the different voltages and currents vary between the channels with a small amount.



The first test is with a 18650 battery, the charger uses constant current at two different settings. It starts with 1A charging and when the battery reach 4.2 volt it will drop to 0.5A charging. The small spikes are the charger pausing the current to measure voltage.



My old 16340 cell does not look nice on the charger, one reason is because the charger is designed for batteries with 1000mAh or more, not less than 300mAh as this cell has left. The electronic is not fast enough to handle the voltage rise.



The second channel works like the first, but uses a slightly lower current.



Using both channels at the same time does not change the charging in any significant way.



Using the oscilloscope I can see the pulses, there is about 50 seconds between them, i.e. the it can take up to 50 seconds before the charger sees a voltage change (That is the reason for the problem with the 300mAh cell).
These pulses are only present when the battery voltage is above 3.8 volt.



A closer look at a single pulse, it is 0.25 second long.



Here I did catch the measuring pulse, just after the voltage reached 4.2 volt and the charger will immediately after the measuring pulse reduce the current to 0.5A.



Here I am having some fun with the slow measuring, I change the voltage and the charger adjust the current at the next measuring pulse. When the charger is off, the delay is much shorter, before it turns on again.
Doing the above traces I use a "fake" battery, i.e. a lab. power supply paralleled with a power resistor.



Conclusion

This charger does not follow the recommended charge procedure for LiIon batteries, but it does charge them to 4.2 volt and then turns off.
With only a constant current charge I will rate this charger as acceptable.



Notes

Here is an explanation on how I did the above charge curves: How do I test a charger

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Thanks HKJ for your ever informative reviews and have a safe and happy xmas.

3

Sad that the Fenix charger isn’t a very good charger.

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Thanks HKJ! Am I the only one who finds this very worrying?

"The first test is with a 18650 battery, the charger uses constant current at two different settings. It starts with 1A charging and when the battery reach 4.2 volt it will drop to 0.5A charging. The small spikes are the charger pausing the current to measure voltage."

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Stop charging at 0,5A current? That is awful

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HKJ will you give this charger as gift to your friend? Will you recommend this charger to your friend?

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Yes and yes. It is not dangerous, but might put a small amount of extra wear on the batteries. I expect that Fenix has a high production quality (i.e. very few faulty chargers) and also a good electric safety in the charger.

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Thank you HKJ for your response. My question was not meant to put you on the spot but rather to appease my hesitation when it comes to chargers that doesn’t follow cc/cv procedure in charging Li-Ion batteries. I follow your Li-Ion battery charger reviews and respects your analysis and conclusions. I even made my own compilation of your reviews which serves as sort of my bible when it comes to looking at a Li-Ion battery charger. I remembered you commenting, “but there is more to a charger than using the correct algorithm,” when you reviewed SysMax i4 V1.

It doesn’t matter, in terms of charging safety, how a charger got there (4.2v then terminate charging) when comparing two chargers with one of them using cc/cv procedure?

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It does matter, you cannot just charger with 10A, but charging with 1A and only going slightly above 4.2 volt does not present any safety problems on 18650 batteries.

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Thanks very much! Frontpage’d and Sticky’d.

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Fenix will soon be releasing their ARE-C2 charger. Let’s hope it has more sophisticated charging algorithms. Can -DeltaV be used for charging Li-Ion, or is that just for NiMh?

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I would expect the ARE-C2 to be very much the ThruNite MCC-4.

No, it is only for NiMH and NiCd