LOG Battery Checker From BOL Review

From: BOL – BOL – Battery Option Limited

What: LOG Battery Checker (Cost about $10)

Review By: Brian S.

When I first heard about the LOG Battery Checker from BOL, I thought to myself, you know, if it actually works, and did all the stuff it talked about for that cheap, that might be a pretty handy little gadget to own. So the questions are, does it actually work?
And what does it actually do?

The LOG Battery Checker is a small little gadget that you can plug into the balancing plug of your LiPO, LiIon, or LiFe Battery, and it will give you a bunch of cool data about the battery pack. It does this by showing you the information on the LCD screen one item at a time.

If first shows you the number of cells. (Up to 6) It then shows you the total current voltage of the battery. After that, it shows the voltage of each cell in the pack separately, and finally the total voltage difference across all the cells. It will also alert you if the pack is imbalanced (if the cells are more then 150mV off from each other)

As you can see, it’s pretty small, in a nice little case, and it actually works like a charm. Not only does it work, but it’s pretty useful. As a basher, I’m not someone who balances their packs, and I was pleasantly surprised after plugging in EVERY pack we had at Big Squid RC headquarters, not one of them was off by more then .05v! Take that all you “Dude, I can’t believe you don’t balance your packs..” people! What’s cool is, for most (90%+) of the LiPo packs we had here, you can plug the balance directly into the LOG device. For some reason, our MaxAmp packs always read 0,0 unless we used the multi plug you see in the picture. Then the MaxAmps packs gave us the correct data also. The only other packs that needed the Multi Plug were the ThunderPower packs, and that was because their balance port was not a standard size like most the other packs. All other packs worked fine without the mulitplug.

I really like having this little device. When I’m out bashing, I can pull a vehicle in, plug in and see immediately how much battery power I have left! This is great when you don’t have an automatic cut-off on your ESC! It’s also great for running a few laps, and seeing just how much power it takes to get around the track, and test your consistency.

For a product under $10, I think it’s a pretty good investment. It’s a quick and easy way to check your batteries when your out bashing, and for a racer, it’s a great way to see how many laps you can get off of a pack.

For more information on the LOG Battery checker, please visit http://www.batteryoption.com/.

As with all our stuff, if you see us at a bash or at the track, feel free to stop by, say hi and check out the stuff! We will give ya some stickers, and even let ya try stuff! (maybe… if you ask nice)

SUMMARY

Time To Bash – 10/10 – Open the package, plug in a battery!

Workability – 8/10 – There are no adjustments you can make on it, but the information it gives is useful. There are a few packs it does not work on without a multi-plug adapter board.

Car Show Rating – 9/10 – Nice and small, easy to carry around.

Bash-A-Bility – 10/10 – Seems pretty durable. Has built in reverse polar protection also. (In case you plug in backwards)

Big Squid Rating -9/10 – Tentacles.. Under $10, lets you check your batteries anywhere. Would be nice if it came with a multi-plug board for the few batteries that don’t work out of the box. (You can get these multi connectors for about $7, so no big deal)