I’ve got free charger Zanflare C4 for review purposes. Then I started to digg at BLF and found there are already four reviews:
“Dammn”, what to do now. Then I’ve got an idea to say few words about some differencies I could observed comparing with well known Opus BT-C3100 (C3100 in short). There is a lot of quite good chargers out there but not so many with analyzing features. Will try to concentrate on that feature.
Main difference between the two is the power they can use during charge and discharge. Since C3100 is using more power it has to use fan to cool down eletronics. Most of us has some sort of problems with C3100 fans. I have already to replace it. Fan is pretty loud and can be anoying if you want to run it in living room, specialy when you want to monitor behavior.
On the other hand C4 has no fan so it is completly quiet. Of course the power used has to be lower, specilay during discharge. Otherwise resistors would be burned quite quickly. So if you are satisfied with slower dischage C4 is good choice.
On discharge/test features I’ve noticed both chargers gives to high readings. Wanted to know why. I’ve studied HKJs reviews and hopefuly found out the reason for this. It might be obvious for some but most people probbaly won’t know. Discharge is not using constant current and it stops for short time to check the voltage. This time is not extracted from the capacity calculation. Longer is the pause higher is the capacity reading.
For test I’ve used brand new Samsung 26L M cells discharged/tested at 0.5A and got C4 on left, C3100 on right
Capacity readings for some LSD AA cells
Looks like C4 has to have longer period of pauses during discharge but it is more consistent. Will see how they are doing with internal resistance.
What do you think? Can we get some percentage to correct capacity readings?
Edit: discharged testing Samsung 2600 cells and got 2573mAh at 0.5A on iCharger 106B+ which is pretty accurate. Both chargers should show about this number.
Keep on comparing! I just started using the Zanflare C4 because I do not like the noise of my Opus BC3100. I would like to know if it can do everything the Opus does.
Sofar I understand that capacity tests take longer and that it reads even higher capacity than the Opus. Thanks for that information. I can not really help much because I’m technical enough about this stuff.
I forgot to tell I like it being quiet, too. It is true it takes longer time, but you can put charger everywhere and not disturb anyone. For example I took it to my job and do some discharge tests in our office. It would be different if analyzing chargers would have some sort of internal logging feature so you could just read data when you get chance, but then it’s very likely they would be much more expensive.
Regarding capacity I’ll try to check real capacity with my hobby charger iCharger 106b+ which is considered quite accurate. Then we can make some sort of correction factor.
I have found the IR tests on the C4 to be reasonably close to the C3100, for GOOD batteries. As the batteries age, IR goes up, readings become higher and more ‘unstable’. I find the readings for ‘bad’ batteries in the C3100 can be way different in different slots or even the same slot on multiple tests. The better the battery, the lower the reading, and generally the more consistent it is.
In general I find IR reading for the C4 to be more consistent. I can pull a battery, put it back in the same slot or a different slot, and get a nearly identical reading.
OTOH, I find the SAME battery tested a month later may have a considerably different IR reading……now that is with not so good batteries. I don’t know if the IR is unstable in old NiMh.
As I’ve noted a number of times, the IR for the Lii-500 is not accurate at all. I’ve tested 3 different chargers, they all act the same giving very low and almost identical readings on just about any battery, even some I know are quite poor and have very high IR readings in the other 2 chargers.
Good for you. Unfortunately not all people can get those fans (or are to expensive shipped from USA) and not all can do replacement. But idea is good, thanks for that.
It’s quite easy to lube the fan bearing. It won’t stop the inherent noise but will make it function (not stick), and some of the grinding noises. The longer you wait, the more the bearing wears, the worse the final result.
In mean time Ive discharged testing Samsung 2600 cells and got 2573mAh at 0.5A down to 2.8V which is pretty accurate result. Voltage on the picture is for two cells in series after some time resting, so not the one just after discharge.
Since your post, do you have any additional thoughts comparing the two chargers? Are you still preferring the Zanflare C4?
I am leaning towards the Opus, but the fan noise concerns me. I do intend to test/rehabilitate a number of NiMH cells and the automatic triple cycle of the Opus (as well as twice the discharge speed) does appeal to me.
