Charger Shootout – Speed, Mah Cutoff
Speed and Mah Cutoff
An important category for a lot of people is speed. How fast does it take to charge my pack? Some of the chargers have a ‘fast charge’ mode. This mode sacrifices accuracy and balancing, and just tries to get the pack charged fast. We decided not to use this mode because most people want their packs fully charged.
Before every charge, each pack was discharged to 3.2v per cell. This is the ‘going rate’ most people like to safely use while discharging LiPo’s. After each charge, the packs were discharged again to 3.2v and the mah each pack had stored/used during the discharge was recorded. In the end, all the pack mah’s were fairly close.
For all testing we used the Team Checkpoint 2S 5000mah LiPo Battery that we used during the Lipo Battery Shootout 2 because we knew it had been broken in, and we knew what to expect out of the mah ratings at this point.
*It should be noted that during this test we had some issues with using the Venom charger. The first time we charged our 5000mah pack, the Venom charger stopped when it thought it put in 5000mah, which was the capacity we had it set to. Upon discharging the pack, it only put out 3796mah. That seemed odd, maybe we screwed something up, so we tried again. Again, same results, the charger thought it put in 5000mah, the battery discharged to 3780. Hmm. So this time we set the capacity setting to 6000mah. The charger thought it charged to 6000mah (ack!), but it really only had 4543mah. Finally we shut off the capacity cut off in the menu. The charger thought it charged the pack to 6162mah, and ended up with 4685 mah. Venom has been contacted about this issue, and we will hopefully bring you an update. For all those Venom owners, you may want to test your packs after a charge, and see if you may be coming up short in the mah area.
| Points | Manufacturer/Charger | Time | mah |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FMA CellPro 10S | 60min | 4623 mah |
| 2 | Hyperion 720i | 61.51min | 4609 mah |
| 3 | Hyperion 615i Duo | 62.26min | 4620 mah |
| 4 | Duratrax Onyx 220 | 72.12min | 4687 mah |
| 5 | Venom Pro Plus | 82.19min | 4685 mah* |
| 6 | Team Checkpoint TC1030 | 97min | 4637 mah |
While we love the Checkpoint around here, it is really slow. The bulk of the charge is done fairly quickly, but the last few amps drag on forever as the charger winds down. Many people just cancel the charge once it gets close to finished and save about 10 minutes.
