Burgeoning enthusiast here and longtime lurker who finally created an account today because I haven’t been able to find an answer to a fairly pressing question of mine for my particular level of experience and by use case. That question is: which charger should I purchase?
Now I know that question has been asked a million times, but after reading through countless other threads and reading reviews of numerous different chargers by HKJ, I feel more overwhelmed than ever. Essentially, I am in the market for a charger that will accurately charge 21700 batteries along with NiMHs. The SkyRC MC3000 is highly regarded, but the price and reports of breakage make me a little concerned. Additionally, it may be a little bit more complex than I am ready to take advantage of at this point. Ideally, I would like a charger that allows me to pretty easily charge my cells with the option to do some more fine-tuned adjusting of things like charge current.
Right now, I am heavily leaning towards the Gyrfalcon All-88. How does this one stack up? Anyone have any other recommendations or experience with other chargers? I’m basing a lot of my search on the wonderful table compiled by HKJ of all of their reviews.
Logan, your needs are not all that complicated. The Gyrfalcon does look nice. The Vapcell is a favorite around here. I have the Miboxer that I find excellent.
How important do you feel the storage charge mode is for the v3 compared to the v2? I know conventional wisdom says to keep batteries stored long term at around 3.7 V, so is this a problem with those of you all that have the V2?
Not important at all… I wouldn’t use it if I had it.
Batteries are consumables, I’d rather keep them at 100% and use them when I need them, rather than keeping them at an optimal %. But I do cycle through my inventory, so all of them get used and charged.
I cycle through mine as well, so that’s reassuring to hear that it’s not very important! Thanks for the help, I think I’m gonna go ahead and place an order for the Vapcell!
I know I’m in the minority but that’s okay. Probably use my chargers more than most. I wouldn’t recommend the Vapcell S4.
I have two that are no longer capable of charging 11 or 12 amps. They can only charge total of 10 amps. So a lot of times I have to use two chargers to charge 4 x 3amps or 2 x 2.5a and 2 x 3 amps.
There are more glitches I’m not going to get into.
Good question. Depends what your needs are? I charge a lot of batteries at two or three amps. The only chargers I know offhand that can charge 4*3amps are The Vapcell S4 and the sky rc. I think there’s another one but I can’t remember.
High amperage charging isn’t my biggest concern. Ideally just looking for a safe charger for multiple battery chemistries and mainly for 18650 and 21700. Ideally would like to have control over the charge current to put less strain on the batteries.
Ultimately, there is no “best” charger. I have a vapcell S4+ which is pretty nice, a vapcell U2 which is nice for travel (except not having usb C), and a zanflare 4C which I believe is discontinued.
I had a miboxxer that did c.3A per channel but something went pop and the input power plug fuse blew.
Also had a BC700 which had the leftmost channel fail to register cells, so I recycled it.
All are pretty much the same, the U2 is a 2 cell micro usb input charger and much cheaper. Best build quality feel was the miboxxer but the electronics went pop, so I wonder if that build quality translated to the internals…
