Test/Review of Charger Efest LUC V4 2014

Batteries and Chargers Chargers
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Charger Efest LUC V4 2014

This is an updated review of the LUC V4 charger, because Efest has adjusted the charge voltage. When possible contents has been reused from the old review.





Efest has been building a line of chargers from single cell to four cell with fixed and variable current, this is a 4 channel LiIon charger with 3 charge currents.




The charger comes in a brown cardboard box with a list of supported batteries.



In the box is the charger, a power supply, a car cable, a manual and a warranty card.



The charger is powered from 12 volt and has an usb output. The usb output can only be activated when no power is connected to the input.



At 0.5 and 1A current the charger can charge 4 batteries. The two arrows are animated while charging.
The voltage display shows the battery voltage (The 8 is due to mixing of digits during long exposure, not because the display showed 8).
Below the display under the word "Charger" is the button, it is used to select charge current and to activate usb output (when possible).



At 2A current only the two center slots can be used, this is clearly illustrated on the display.



Usb output uses a icon in the center. This does not indicate what slot to use (It is slot #2).



The sliders for the battery work smoothly and can accept batteries from 30mm to 70.5mm.



Between the batteries is a list of supported battery sizes, but the 10440 size is only valid for IMR cells.





The charger can handle 70 mm long batteries including flat top cells.
The charger is rated for 10440 batteries, but due to the charger current it is only recommended to charge IMR 10440.
Note: Using to high charge current will not make the batteries explode, but will reduce lifetime of the batteries.



Measurements

LiIon at 4.2V (ICR/IMR)

  • When not connected to power it will discharges with up to 0.09mA, except the USB out channel that will discharge with 0.15mA.
  • When the battery is full the charger will discharge with about 0.1mA.
  • If the voltage drops below 4.05 volt the charging will restart.
  • Power cycling or reinsertion of the battery will restart charging.
  • At about 0.65 volt the charger will detect a battery and start charging with 150mA
  • The current will drop to 60mA at 3 volt, where the full charge current is applied.
  • The voltmeter is limited to 4.2 volt, if the voltage get much above 4.2 volt it will show 0.0 volt.
  • The voltmeter shows about 0.06 volt to low.
  • The channels on the charger are independent, i.e. there are small differences between them.





The charger does a good CC/CV charge curve with a good termination current.



My old IMR cell is also charged perfectly.



Same with the 18350 cell.



Not surprisingly the 14500 is also perfect.



With 1A it is exactly the same, very good CC/CV charge curve. The termination current stays low, this means fully charger cells.





Both larger and smaller capacity 18650 cells are charge perfectly.



With 2A current the charge does also looks good.



At 1A my old IMR 16340 cell is also charged perfect.





The other 3 slots looks close to the first slot, all doing a good CC/CV charge.



Charging four cells at the same time works fine.



Using a DC power supply gives the same result (No surprise). The charger uses about 1.6A. I will expect about the same result with a 2A charge current, because it is limited to two batteries.



M1: 40,5°C, M2: 39,8°C, M3: 40,7°C, M4: 40,1°C, M5: 40,2°C, HS1: 56,9°C

The heat from the charger is distributed fairly even across the batteries.



M1: 39,3°C, M2: 42,1°C, M3: 35,7°C, HS1: 45,9°C





The charger does slowly ramp the current to the selected charger current, changing the selection will start a new ramp from 0.



USB output

  • When using usb output, the symbol will flash when the battery is nearly empty
  • When usb output is on, but unloaded, it will draw about 12mA.
  • Usb output turns off after about 30 seconds with a load below 25mA.
  • It is not possible to turn off the usb output with the switch.
  • When mains power is connected, the usb output is off.
  • Usb output is coded as Apple 1A
  • Usb output will turn off when overloaded





As usual I do a load sweep first, to see how the output works at different loads. The LUC turns off at 1.15A, this is good for a 1A rated output.



Only one battery is used for usb output (Slot #2), here I am running with a 0.5A load, the output turns off when the battery is down to just over 3 volt. The efficiency is good at 85% to 90%.



2600mAh has shorter runtime.



3400mAh has longer runtime.



Increasing the load to 1A, show that the output has some trouble just before the battery is empty.



With 7mV rms noise and 108 mV peak-peak noise the output voltage is good.



With 1A load the rms noise increases to 9mV and the peak-peak to 110mV, again a good value. The trouble just before the battery is empty will, of course, have much higher noise.


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



Conclusion

The charger uses the correct algorithm has a good termination current and I like the design.
The usb output does also work fine, but I do not know how much use it is in this type of charger. If it had been powered when the charger was powered, it would probably be more useful.

I will call this a good LiIon charger.



Notes

The charger was supplied by Efest for review.

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

Read more about how I test USB power supplies and chargers

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Thank you for the review!

3

It looks like they really nailed it.

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I agree with your assessment of the USB port functionality. They probably should have just not bothered to include it.

5

With a good CC/CV charge profile, selectable charging current, and a nice display, this looks like a good multi-bay charger for single-cell lights. I’m tempted to get one if it’s reasonably priced. Kudos to Efest for continuing to improve this charger.

Thanks for the review!

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Wonder how much they will go for!?

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+1

8

Vaping sites are selling it for about twice as much as the i4. Street price.

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twice?in pair with XTAR VP1 price :quest:

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The VP1 has a wide range of prices out there, so yes and no. MAP or MSRP for the LUC V4 appears to be $40.

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any good site to buy this efest charger?

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I have one on the way, knew they’d be great, and I do believe Richard will be carrying them when they’re readily available, you can bet he’ll have a very competitive price too! :wink:

My SoShine needs some help, this is just the ticket! I just got an HP Battery pack today, opened it up and found the expected Samsung ICR18650 26C cells inside. The 3 pairs were at different charge levels, 2.69, 2.59, and 2.42. Plugging 4 of these into my SoShine made it get hot, I mean, the cells at the top end were 140º when I checked them! So I cooled the cells, put a fan on it, and it’s done fine ever since, charging the 2600mAh cells in around 3 hours and staying 85º above the torroids in the charger with the cells just barely above room temperature. Have to remember the fan if I’ve got run down cells. (And this is with 171 vent holes drilled above the charger torroids in the SoShine!)

I wonder if this LUC will be ventable? Would prefer to keep the heat down as much as possible for obvious reasons.

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Illumination Supply sells one Efest charger, so I'm hoping they'll carry this too. Mtn Electronics may sell it too. I may get one, but I'm not interested unless a good domestic vendor like one of those two companies will sell it.

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Mtn Electronics will be placing a large order with Efest on or about Feb 8th, when they return from Chinese New Year vacation. So they’ll have a bunch of Efest stuff probably the second week of February or so.

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We already have the LUC V4, however our own tests revealed the voltage problem so we never sold them. We're waiting on Efest to swap them to the revised edition.

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Thanks for the update Calvin. Hopefully Efest gets the updated version to you soon.

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Awesome!!

Question though, why the sawtooth pattern on the CC graph in the 1A modes, IC adjusting for load or searching for proper current levels? Thermal regulation?

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I would expect it is the regulation.

My guess is that the microprocessor adjust the voltage on a capacitor to select charge current and it is this adjustment that gives the sawtooth.

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Well, now that they have the 4.3v old version and a correct 4.2v version, a new version that has a switch for either should be cake!!

Thanks for the review!

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Wow thanks man. Great review. Is 0.5A not too high for 14500 cells or 10440 cells?