Lipo Charger brands, opinions wanted.

[soutthpaw]

Ok, this is the one item that seems to have way too many choices and after doing a search and reading many threads I am still not sure what to go with.
I would like to buy one charger and be done with it. right now it will be just for 3s lipos and 7.2 nicads. however I would like to get a large RC heli at some point in the future. What I am looking for is opinions on what brands are accurate and reliable and what should be avoided. there seem to be many options in the $40 to $80 range. are any of the budget brands worth buying. IE hobbypartz, hobbyking stuff.
so far I am looking at

Duratrax Onyx 235
Junsi iCharger 106B (seems this can measure internal resistance for monitoring battery/cell health too)
Duratrax ICE
Thunder or skycharger series from hobbypartz
Turnigy series from hobbyking.
hyperion EOS 0606i

I will check the supporting vendor sites first once I have decided on a charger

[dunebuggy79]

I`m no expert but I have a couple of the onyx brand chargers and they seem to work nicely!One thing I would recommend is to buy the one that charges 2 at a time I am kicking my self in the ass for not buying that one!!

[JohnRobHolmes]

The internal resistance on any charger is total BS for lipo, don't make any decisions based on that feature. Anything under 50mohm can't be measured accurately without a load going through the battery to give a voltage drop, and most lipo packs are well under 50mohm.

I'm a hyperion fanboy all the way. I have blown up so many hobby city chargers it is not even funny at this point. I have one working unit out of 8 purchased over the past few years. I have 8 hyperion chargers in use out of 8 purchased over the years. I can attest to the 0606i being an accurate and reliable unit, I have owned many of them.

[Charlie-III]

"If you have 20 different brands, you will get 20 different supporting votes."

My son & I use Venom Pro Chargers, had both for about a year with lots of use on NiCD, NiMH, 2S & 3S LiPO. It does balance charge for LiPO using a JST/Align type plug.
It can be powered off a wall outlet of a decent 12VDC supply (we use a car battery at comps or a 7AH Gel cell).

It does pretty much any battery size or chemistry.

As to the Duratrax Ice, I don't believe it does LiPO, thus that is out.

With a little planning, I NEVER have a need for charging 2 packs at once, so I don't consider that a concern. I've been charging RC packs since ~1979.......

As to checking "Internal resistance", never saw a good one for RC, but I've never looked at that charger so I don't know. I deal with lead acid batteries in my line of work, a similar "test" is useful, not sure in this case though.

[JohnRobHolmes]

What I do to test lipo resistance is to use a load resistor to give a certain amp draw (like 10c), then calculate IR from the voltage drop. Best practice is to get two points of data at two amp draws for a more accurate value.

But in all honesty it is a waste of time to find the IR of a pack used in a crawler. If the pack is really poopy it is obvious. Maybe if I was building a pack of 100 cells and wanted to weed out the bad ones, or going for a world record would I care. I have only done it for informative purposes, it has never actually been useful to me.

[Solitaire]

Well, this is the other side of the coin.
I've never blown up a HobbyCity charger. I purchased an Accucel 6 about 5 years ago, but wanted something with a bit more power and bought a 106B+. My brother now has the first Accucel 6 and it's still going strong, but I was so impressed with the Accucel 6 and wanted a "cheapie" for smaller packs, I bought another and use both chargers extensively.
Never found the need for an expensive charger as these have served me (and my brother) very well over the years for our helis, boats and planes...and now crawlers.

I don't use the internal resistance feature of the 106B+. As somebody has already posted, if the pack is iffy, you'll know it by the LiPo's performance...or lack thereof.

[Stregone]

I just got one of those 4 port chargers from hobbypartz and it has been great so far. Wish I got it sooner, even though each port is only 50 watts, its handy to have 4 of them.

[steele42]

I love my onyx 235. Lots of charging and balancing options. Built in fan. Lots of presets (for all your different batteries), lots of info as your charge, even the voltage in each cell. Ac/dc. I've only had it for a few month, but no issues so far. It's my first charger and is really user friendly

[OKJeepin]

I have the Onyx 235 and it seems to be a pretty good charger, pretty user friendly.
..but, if John Holmes recommends the Hyperion, well, I'd listen to him.

[TexasSP]

Originally Posted by JohnRobHolmes

I'm a hyperion fanboy all the way.

x2

Have had my original for five years now, not a single issue. Every other charger I have owned has had issues of some kind.

I would rather splurge on the charger and cheap out on the batteries. A good charger can make sub par batteries last longer, but a cheap charger can ruin high end batteries and shorten the life of cheap batteries.

[DiggyStyle]

HYPERION all the way. You won't be sorry. You get what you pay for and those chargers are worth it.

[AreCee]

So far the best chargers I have seen and used are made by Junsi (iCharge) and FMA Direct.

The IR check in the iCharge is nice for NiMH but pretty much useless for Lipo, either they're good or not and you don't need to check IR.

[AsILayDying]

I currently have an Onyx 235 and a Hyperion. Both do the job, really just depends on your budget. The Onyx can be had NEW for 80 bucks. Has lots of options and very easy to use.