This short review is intended as a ‘user-experience’ rather than a formal review and I would refer readers to the two (that I know of anyway) excellent really in-depth reviews by well-respected experts at:
I have been using the Evova Gyrfalcon S8000 for three weeks now as my ‘main’ charger instead of the MC3000 which I had been using for the past ten years.
I have tried the S8000 with several different kinds of batteries (cells). Mostly I have been using Simple mode just as that FW runs on the charger with Firmware V64 downloaded from Enovapura. My charger came with V58 installed but downloading and installing then running V64 was very straightforward. A heavy-duty looking micro-USB cable is provided with the charger but I imagine most micro-USB cables would be fine.
Working with the charger has been great. The charger recognises liion 3.7, liion 1.5 and NiMH, which are all that I use routinely. It also recognises many others including LiFeP of which I have a few and just charged in the S8000 to check-it-out, as it were.
When they are first inserted, the S8000 runs a check on the cell and then indicates what type of cell has been inserted with N for NiMH, L for Liion and D for 1.5V liion. My use with these three has seen the S8000 recognise and terminate them correctly every time, fully charged according to specs with the termination recognised with five beeps (beeps can be turned off) and the indicator LED turning green. The only exception was a 10000mAh size D NiMH (of which only two will fit). For these large cells with that capacity, I suspect the charger-set current in simple mode is too low (around 0.1C) to get a termination every time. I had no problem getting terminations with these cells in Professional mode however, and that mode which allows you to specify virtually every parameter, I found pretty easy to set up and use even the first time around. I will mostly however be using simple mode for the bulk of my charging.
There has been some discussion here and elsewhere about how easy the S8000 is to physically use. The hardware version I have is the latest, with the longer negative terminals and while the sliders were a little stiff at first they wear in quickly especially with the addition of a bit of light oil to the sliding rails. The longer negative terminals also mean you can more easily move them to insert batteries. I had no problem with getting contact with any of the cells I use - including AAAA (quad A) NiMH which most other chargers I have used do not like. The contact seems great and has been much-improved in this latest version. There has also been discussion of the haptic-touch buttons instead of mechanical buttons: in my experience - no problems, and I even like them (or at least these ones which I thought I would not) and there is clearly less to go wrong with something that is not mechanical.
So, all up, very happy - five stars etc. I would like to be able to set the charging current in Simple-mode as you can with the (equivalent regime of the) MC3000: maybe we can have that as an option within Simple-mode in a future S8000 firmware upgrade? But you can clearly use this charger as a very simple, but effective device for every-day use, or when the inclination or need arises, as a really in-depth battery analyser that is without current peer.