all of HKJ’s testing and reviews has my head about to spin off. I have had 18650 lights for a few years, but recently I’m becoming more serious about it. I have quadrupled the amount of lights that I had. I also have some old laptop batteries that I would like to break down and check to see if functional. I currently have a Nitecore i4 that is a year old that I guess has served me well so far. I just want to have a better charger to allow me to become familiarized with diagnostics of batteries. Below I have some chargers that I have been looking at. Some such as the Foxnovo F-4S I can’t find much information about. Any and all help is greatly appreciated as I am not sure which charger will fit me needs best.
If you really want a fully featured charger/analyser, it's hard to go past a proper hobby charger. I have the icharger 106b plus and have been very happy with it.
The downsides that may put some people off include needing an external power supply (12V car battery also works fine) and having to organise your own battery holders and connectors.
On the other hand, they will handle pretty much all battery chemistries so are potentially much more useful than a charger just designed for Li-Ion.
If you want to work with used laptop pulls, get an analyzing charger. Your options would include the Opus and LiitoKala on your list, and the hobby charger gadabout mentioned. The downside of a hobby charger is that you can generally only do a discharge test on one cell at a time. The LiitoKala can do two, and the Opus can do four (but with limits on the discharge current). Doing four at a time can make a big difference if you have a bunch of cells to go through, because a full charge-discharge-recharge cycle will take more than half a day if you use 1/5th C rate used for the manufacturer rating.
Any good chargers that can do AA up to D sized cells, as well as multi-chemistry? I’ve got rechargable AAA, AA, 18650, and may get some 32650 as well as rechargable D-Cells in the future.
Yea I saw that. I might go that direction. Still have to decide if I’m even going to keep using larger cells or not. I might just switch a complete AA/18650 lineup.