The positive terminals have two notches each. This makes it easier to insert flat top cells without needing to balance them near the top. That said, if the wrap of a cell blocks the negative end then you will need to carefully align the notch on the negative terminal with the negative end of a cell.
I had a look at the very detailed and excellent review!
This charger looks to be one of the better one’s for most cylindrical cells.
Just one concern regarding the scroll wheel which also doubles as a push button.
If scrolling using the scroll wheel, I can see instances where operating the scroll wheel in scroll mode, pushing or pulling too hard might accidentally cause the scroll wheel to click as a push button. Conversely, if operating the scroll wheel in push button mode, if pushed off center this may cause the scroll wheel to accidentally scroll instead. These accidental operations may lead to problems with unwanted results.
Really would prefer separate push buttons for navigating instead of the scroll wheel.
In practice it works quite good. No problems while scrolling, but it happened a few times that I accidentally scrolled while pressing the button. All in all it lets you navigate much faster than up/down/enter buttons.
I had difficulties with accidentally selecting YES when starting a task. The charger prompts you to ask if you’d like to apply the task to all slots. I scrolled to NO but when I press the scroll wheel to click NO it would change to YES. This happened about three times. I’ve become used to the sensitivity of the scroll wheel. It has some tactile feeling when scrolling and isn’t freely spinning.
Maybe I missed it. Can the 5000 charge the LiIon >1.5 volt cells? I notice the per bank voltage is listed as being up to 5 volts. So with the correct firmware it should be able to charge them.
Although with care, it seems that accidental push and scroll of the scroll wheel is minimal.
However, there is still that possibility of accidental activation, which would annoy me no end. I would accept the scroll wheel if used ONLY for scrolling up and down with an added separate button for confirming selection. In this case it is very unlikely accidental activation will occur.
So, as it is at the moment, with the dual function scroll wheel for scrolling and selecting (push button), I will not be purchasing this charger due to possible accidental selections.
Looks like it has plastic kickstand legs. I wonder if they would weaken and crack over time. Wish it were metal like the old Powerex MH-C9000 that I’m looking to replace.
up to now I haven’t noticed any temperature sensors in the slots, like the MC3000 has them, nor any temperature values of the batteries in the various pictures of the display screen …
Nice review as always
Definitely it has a lot of improvements, but for me that I barely use more than 2-3A for charging, this one feels like a downgrade compared to the MC3000, no temperature sensors, no saved programs, no PC connection, no buttons per slot, and I like monochrome LCDs.
If the MC3000 firmware were open source and more programmers worked on it, the charger would have a lot more untapped potential.
No, unfortunately there is no support for 1.5V Li-ion batteries. It might be something that can be added Dlater with a firmware update, but I haven’t got an affirmation from SkyRC yet.
No, you have to manually select the battery type, charging current etc.
A charger this expensive should be able to detect the battery chemistry.
It also seems like a whole lot of programming spinning that wheel! just to get your battery charging the way you want.
Every charger I have you put it in it detects the chemistry and then you just program either an individual battery or all four of them to the charge rate you want. It’s a lot less time consuming.
