Totally agreed, sometimes it is not worth the all the hassle to setup a charge. I mean li-ion is a very common tech now, not like 10 years ago when special treatment was required to handle them.
I have a DIY 6-bay 18650 holder to use with my icharger 106b+ and I rarely use it because it takes about 30 seconds to setup the charge EVERYTIME. The Xtar VP2 is my favorite charger and most used one, plug and play and voltage display, you can tell the health of your batteries by the termination voltage and the temperature towards the end of the charge.
Kidding aside. Ever since I got the Opus BT-C3100, I used it 90% of the time. I only use my Nitecore I4 & I2 or my TrustFire TR-003P4 when I need to charge more batteries at the same time.
The slots on the opus BT-C3100 are much much smoother than the nitecore i4 plus you can select the charge current. Only time I ever use the i4 is when I charge batteries in my car on a trip.
I haven’t used any of the xtar chargers but for me the opus is the best solution.
battery chargers , which of the 2 is the best for hard
everyday use and does the most :quest:
P.S.,
I got answers on the OPUS 2.0 version, but I’m
asking about the 2.1 version. Has the 2.1 solved
some of the complaints against the 2.0 ? Does any
one know ?
George , To read a review is one thing. I know HKJ knows
what he’s talking about. He’s the master at this stuff. I want
info on chargers that are from long term use. Info that’s from
the everyday, weekly users of these chargers. The users that
give info from the many times and types of batteries , they’ve
put in these chargers. Like where the “rubber meets the road ”.
wight: You gave me some good thoughts and answers in
some of your earlier posts. Now for “hard everyday use” ,
I mean the charger is being used to charge lots of batteries,
sometimes with different chemistries . Plain & simple, they
get used quite alot ! How will it hold up , under the charging
of say 10-20-30-40-50 batteries a week for example. That’s
what I mean by “hard everyday use”.
When you say different chemistries, can you be specific? The XP4c only does 4.2v Li-Ion chemistries plus NiMH/NiCd. You’ve been repeatedly mentioning chemistry but some chemistries are the same voltage and charge profile while others are not. Do you need only 4.2v termination or do you need 3.8v and/or 4.35v?
Frankly I think the fan in the Opus will certainly fail. It’s clearly a very low quality fan.
May I ask how you burn through cells at that rate?
1-Those are basically the different chemistries-Li-Ion ,
NiMh and NiCd.
2-Voltage 4.2 , 3.8 and possibly 4.35 for future batts.
3-What do you base the Opus fan failing on ?
4-Those 10-40 #’s were in answer to your ” I really need to
be clearer about my meaning about hard use”. Is that not
hard use ? What’s your criteria for hard use ?
The XP4c won’t do the voltages you want. The Opus is not a good choice for charging different Li-Ion voltages. It has a tiny switch inside to change voltages which I suspect is not rated for many cycles, although I could be wrong about that. You must cut a hole in the case in order to get a pointy tool in there to flip the switch around to different positions. I’ve also read that the Opus takes an eternity to terminate 4.35v charges. I think that the Xtar VP2/VP4 is the only charger(s) that can deal nicely with high/normal/low voltage li-ion charging and makes it easy to switch on the fly. The VP2 also makes it clear onscreen what voltage it is set to, I do not think that the BT-C3100 does that!
It’s a low end fan, the construction makes that obvious. It also sounds like crap. I have enough experience with small DC fans to know what a fan that’s guaranteed to fail sounds like. I don’t use the Opus unattended; if I don’t replace the fan beforehand I expect that I’ll eventually hear it start to struggle to start (or just hear silence) and be forced to replace it.
I’d definitely call that hard use! I meant that I was curious about how you end up needing to charge so many discharged cells. Care to tell?
When my BT-C3100 arrived last 11 June 2014, it operated straight (24 hours a day) for twelve days because I took the capacity readings (mAh) of all my Lithium Ion and NiMH cells (132 batteries that time) using its charge-test function. During its 288 hours non-stop operation, I did not encounter any problem except for the regular complains from my wife and kids that my charger is noisy at night.
Currently, I use my BT-C3100 at the average of twice a week with about 2 to 3 hours operation per use. It will only be used for extended times when my online battery orders arrive (like the 8 Samsung INR18650-29Es last 24 October 2014) because I always see to it that I test the capacities of all my cells. Didn’t encounter any major problem with it till now except for the noise of its fan.
My Opus is the 2.0 version - the first group buy of tatasal.
Its not that noisy for me actually. Its just like a phone set on vibrate mode and it sets off from time to time depending on the temperature of the charger (I think). Maybe to some the ‘noise’ is irritating. :~
It’s about the same noise level as anything else with a medium-speed fan that size. (25mm? It’s a very small fan.) Definitely loud by general consumer product standards, but not loud by mid-to-large power battery charger standards.
It’s probably about the same volume level as my hobby charger, ignoring the noises the Opus makes when the fan first starts (the not-enough-oil-in-here noises). Once it gets going and the rattle goes away it’s probably in the 40-50db range I suppose?
Note that AFAIK v2.1 does not change the fan but does add ramping instead of the simple off/on behavior from older models. I don’t know if it adds any hysteresis or PID or anything to keep the fan from ramping up and down all the time. One of the reviews probably covers that. The on/off definitely makes the fan more noticeable, but with the fan spun up there’s no two ways about it: it is loud.
Doing anything to reduce the noise is probably going to be a drastic change in some way. Adding a decent fan will make the charger much larger, and it’s already big.
