Test/Review of Charger Soshine H2

Charger Soshine H2




This charger looks like a two channel and improved version of the S7. The charger suppors 3 chemistries and up to 26650 cells, but only one charge current.




There is a lot of explanation on the box.



The contents of the box is only the charger and a power supply, i.e. the box is the manual.
I wonder about the white power supply to a black charger.



The charger has a small display and two buttons, one for each channel.
With no battery in the channel the button selects between ICR and IFR batteries.
With a battery in the channel the button toggles between used charge time and mAh.



Here is the full display, it was caught during self-test at power on.
The background led will turn off after a short time, pressing a button will turn it on again for some time.
Li-Ion is for ICR/IMR (LiCoO2/LiMn) batteries.
Li-FeP is for IFR (LiFePO4) batteries.



The charger can be supplied with 12 volt from the supplied power adapter or with 5 volt from usb, but a high power usb supply is needed, it can use up to 2A according to specifications.



The slider is very smooth and can handle from 31mm to more than 72 mm long batteries.







The charger can handle 70 mm long batteries including flat top cells.
Due to the "high" charge current, small LiIon batteries cannot be charged in it.



Measurements

  • When not connected to power it will discharges with up to 6mA (LiIon).
  • When power is connected with a full battery, the charger will charge, when the voltage drops slightly below termination voltage.
  • Any voltage drop, reinsertion of battery or power cycling will restart charging.
  • At 0 volt on the battery the charge current is 3.6mA (Display shows Stby).
  • At about 0.6 volt the charger activates and starts testing for LiIon/NiMH, voltmeter shows -.-
  • The voltmeter can show up to 2.4 volt in NiMH mode.
  • At about 2.5 volt LiIon (LiIon/LiFePO4 settings has the same threshold) is selected, the voltmeter has a minimum value of 3.2 volt for LiOn.
  • The voltmeter is limited to 4.2 volt maximum in LiIon mode.
  • While charging it is possible to switch between time and mAh on the display
  • The channels on the charger are independent, i.e. there are small differences between them.



I do not use my usual scale on the curves, because the charger overcharges I uses a higher maximum voltage



The charger uses a CC/CV charge curve with 800mA charge current, but check the voltage scale.
The charger goes up to 4.29 volt, that is not good.



The second channel goes above 4.4 volt, this is very bad.
Notice: The PA (Panasonic) batteries I am testing with are unprotected.



Something went completely wrong with this cell, the voltage jumps up and down and the up is above 4.7 volt!
It is probably because the overcharge protection in the battery trips, then the charge voltage goes up.



My 3400mA cell is also overcharged.



The old 16340 cell does never terminate, it has way to high leak current at 4.4 volt.



The charger is not heating the batteries much.


M1: 35,0°C, M2: 36,5°C, HS1: 46,4°C

But there is some heat just below the display.


M1: 44,3°C, HS1: 58,3°C

And on the usb power connector.



The charger runs a 10 second test cycle, before engaging full charge current.



The pulsing is probably for voltage measurement.



IFR LiFePO4

Pressing the button for a channel, without any battery in that channel, will select between ICR and IFR batteries. Default is ICR, i.e. 4.2 volt charge, pressing the button will select IFR, this is supposed to be 3.6 volt charge.



With IFR or LiFePO4 batteries, the charger is supposed to stop charging at about 3.6 volt. This charger does reduce the current, but not to zero. This means the voltage raises to above 4 volt, instead of dropping to 3.4 volt.



NiMH



With a 2000mAh eneloop, the charger only chargers 1000mAh, this is not very good.



On channel #2 I only got 600mAh.



Two eneloops, does not work better.



The eneloop XX does also get a partial charge.



With NiMH it uses the same 10 second startup.



And pulsing while charging.


Testing with 2500 volt and 5000 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.



Conclusion

The charger did not charge one battery satisfactory during my test. It looks like the charger has 3 separate problems: To high charge voltage for ICR batteries, does not turn off on IFR batteries and partial charge on NiMH.
I cannot recommend this charger.



Notes

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

Thanks for the review HKJ. Its odd that a company can have charges on either end of the scale. Good to shocking. I hope more members read your review here as this one is on the bad end of the scale.

i don't like the charger

thank you HKJ for the publication!! ;)

Yikes! And I thought being a SoShine it would have been much better!

-Garry

Yikes, this charger is horrible!

Thanks for the review, definitely to be avoided.

It doesn’t seem to me to be an insurmountable task to integrate a voltmeter, charge/discharge, and capacity-test functions into a li-ion charger. Why can they do it for NiMH chargers and start at $30, but for li-ions you need a $100 RC-pack charger? Is it simply a matter of demand?

hehe. he.

;)

( i can't utter more or else i get rebenched gg )

thanks a lot for the test!
i was thinking about buying this charger with my $25 gift card at dx, but now i won’t…

What a piece of garbage!

Thanks for the review HJK. I wouldn’t buy a charger unless you’ve seen it first.

I’m mistaken in my belief? Please correct me, there’s no capacitor between my brain and my mouth, it’s direct drive, there’s no filtering of the noise. :slight_smile:

Turnigy Accucel-6 is $24 cough

I stopped reading after those voltage errors.
Thanks for saving us alot of future problems HKJ.

Good to know. Thanks!

So let me get this straight, a $23 RC charger that is LiCo compatible and will balance-charge six cells simultaneously? And you’re implying that it can do capacity tests on cells as well?

Wow, those are horrible numbers!

That’s why I like my Cottonpickers chargers! Built in volt meters and can charge at 1.2 amps (or 500ma or 700ma, etc.) all day :slight_smile:

http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/showthread.php?240304-gt-FS-Cottonpickers-Chargers-incl-Worlds-smallest-Li-ion-charger-with-display

-Jamie M.

2 years ago when i was new to the scene i thought that 24$ was big money for something mundane like a charger, especially when there so many Trustfire and Ultrafire charger options around. with shipping costs, accucel-6 type of budget hobby chargers cost much more than that, maybe 40$ total. sure, there are the 24$ clones with FREE shipping from Dinodirect.

now, after 2 years of experience and insider contacts (incl dealers, manufacturers and distributors) and knowing the cost prices of chargers, i know that 24$ RRP is way overpriced for the typical cheap build Soshine, XXXFire and XTAR stuff, while it's a reasonable price for budget hobby chargers.

for more functionality and better build quality, feel, material, you pay a fair price, 40$ for the C9000, and folks love it for this fair price. now think of a C9000 with added support for liion, lifepo4, and for 4×26650. the charger now needs an internal fan and its dimensions grow due to the larger battery tray. with the same quality of C9000 product, the price must be higher too. HKJ and i we don't need to pay for new chargers anymore, we get free review samples to test, report on, or to review. but even if i didn't get free samples, i would think that 40$ is no more big money for a quality charger such as C9000. they're worth every cent. oops i am posting in the wrong thread. you guys know what i am referring to haha :P

i have one +–2 weeks :*

Hi I ordered it by mistake from Fast Teck. Soshine H2. Tried to cancel the order five minuets later and it was the weekend and order went threw. Going to charge me $7.55 + what it coast me to send it back. $8.00 more. That’s $15.55 that it would cost me to send a $22.00 charger back. They have a charger that is rated good on this site. They wont wave the $7.55 if I buy a different charger so I will get it somewhere else. I decided to try this one with some fairly new NiMH AA 2600. Both took more than there rated cap. They also got very hot. I don’t think I’m going to try to use it on my LiMn 18650’s. It’s going in trash after I finish this. I wasn’t going to send it back for $6.00 store credit after the charges on shipping so they could sell it to someone else.
P.S. I wish I would have saw the review on this before I ordered it.

“Both took more than there rated cap.”

That’s completely normal for NiMH, as their charging efficiency is very far from 100%.

The Nimh 2600’s took 3857 on one and 3654 on the other. That kind of surprised me. My real concern was they got really hot. My other charger well make them worm and put up to 2950 into them. I steal think I’m going to get a strait Li-ion charger.