Review- Venom Medion Dual 10 amp Battery Charger with Speakers

THE Venom Medion Dual 10 amp Battery Charger Review

The battery charger wars have been raging hard lately and one of the hottest new chargers on the market is the Venom Medion Dual 10 amp. The Medion comes not only with all the “standard” features that a high end charger would include, but it “one-ups” the pack by having built in speakers. Are the speakers just a gimmick? Does the Venom provide a quality charge to your battery? And most importantly, is it worth your hard earned cash? Let’s find out shall we…

From: Venom
Direct Link: Medion Dual Charger

Review By: Cubby
Pics By: Cubby

Street Price: $199

Specs:

Input Voltage: 11.0-18.0V
Circuit Power: 200W max charge x 2, 25W max discharge x 2
Charge Current: 0.1-10.0A x 2
Discharge Current: 0.1-5.0A x 2
Cell Balancing: Yes
Current Drain for LiPo Balance: 200mAh/cell
Alarm Voltage: Lower than 10V or grerater than 18V
Weight: 3lbs 10oz
Dimensions: 11.8 x 5.9 x 3.35″
Max Cell Ni-MH: 18
Max Cell Lithium: 6S
USB: Yes
Fan: Yes
Temp probe: Included
Requires: 11-18V DC Power Supply (300 watt or greater recommended)
Warranty: “Venom warrants this product to be free of material and workmanship defects when new. Venom will at its sole discretion repair or replace components free of charge within 90 days from date of purchase or within 30 days for all electronic components.”

Primary Competition: Hitec Ultima X2, TrakPower VR-1, Hyperion 720iDUO3

What’s In The Box: Charger, LED light, audio cable, balance boards, various wiring, instructions

Build Quality: The chassis of the Medion is constructed out of metal and feels rock solid. Wiring looked to be of good quality.

Testers: Cubby, Brian, Tim, and Iron Mike

Set-up Notes: We used the Venom Medion off a TrakPower DPS power supply and charged a variety of Pro-Match and TrakPower Lipo batteries with it.

Ease of Use: We did not have to crack out the manual to use the Venom. Yes, it took a few minutes to get acquainted with the menu, but for the most part it was easy sailing.

Power: 200 watts x two channels is quite robust. No, that is not the most power available on the market, but having the ability to charge two packs at 10 amps each is quite respectable.

On track: To test how packs charged on the Venom felt on the track we used our Castle powered Pro-Line Pro-2 truck. Some of the packs were Trakpower, while others were Pro-Match, and we only used the balance mode on the Venom. We also charged the packs on our reference charger for comparison purposes. Driving the Lipo’s after they were charged on the Venom proved that it does indeed provide very high quality charges. Low end snap was very robust and the voltage on the top-end seemed top notch. To boil it down, packs charged on the Venom felt downright awesome when used in our test truck.

Broken Parts/Issues: We submitted the Medion to our normal thrashing- meaning we purposely dropped it, stood on it, etc, and it still works fine today.

As far as “issues” go, the audio cable that came with the Medion did not work properly. The supplied cable would only yield left channel audio when pushed all the way in, but would do stereo if left about half way out. When we used one of our own audio cables there was no issue.

During our “2C fast charge” testing we saw inconsistent results. Meaning? Our reference charger would roughly take the same amount of time to charge a pack and then the pack would yield roughly the same results under a load. On fast charge with the Venom the differences in charge times would vary up to 10 minutes in length, and the packs performance under load would vary up to 600 mah. This is a wider spread than we’ve seen in our previous testing. We did not notice this issue when balance charging with the Venom.

Performance/Quality of charge testing- All performance bench testing was done with a Pro-Match 2S 5000 mah Lipo. We compared the Venom against our “reference” charger, a Hyperion 720iNet3. For complete testing criteria just shoot us an email or read one of our recent charger reviews.

Quality Of 2C Fast Charge

Speed of 2C Fast Charge (time to charge up a pack)-

Reference Charger: Run #1- 40 minutes 44 seconds, Run #3- 40 minutes 31 seconds
Venom Medion: Run #2- 57 minutes 48 seconds, Run #4- 60 minutes 58 seconds

Output voltage-

Reference Charger (run #1, tested 4662 mah, 9:21 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.343 volts
4 minutes- 7.136 v
6 minutes- 7.005 v
8 minutes- 6.879 v

Venom Medion (run #2, tested 4561 mah, 9:10 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.312 volts
4 minutes- 7.117 v
6 minutes- 6.996 v
8 minutes- 6.853 v

Reference Charger (run #3, tested 4687 mah, 9:25 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.363 volts
4 minutes- 7.152 v
6 minutes- 7.020 v
8 minutes- 6.899 v

Venom Medion (run #4, tested 4637 mah, 9:18 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.286 volts
4 minutes- 7.100 v
6 minutes- 6.981 v
8 minutes- 6.855 v

Conclusions 2C Fast Charge- As I always note- our sample size is extremely small and therefore not scientific. From our limited amount of data it would appear that the Venom takes much longer to do a “fast 2C” charge, up to 20 minutes longer, and even though it took longer to charge, the quality of charge was not as good as our reference. Voltage was lower on the pack when charged by the Venom and the runtime was shorter. Based on our limited data it would appear our reference battery charger produced a faster and higher quality 2C fast charge.

Quality of 2C Balance Charge

Speed of 2C Balance Charge (time to charge up a pack)-

Reference Charger: Run #1- 35 minutes 46 seconds, Run #3- 35 minutes 53 seconds
Venom Medion: Run #2- 48 minutes 52 seconds, Run #4- 52 minutes 55 seconds

Reference Charger (run #1, tested 4712 mah, 9:27 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.333 volts
4 minutes- 7.125 v
6 minutes- 6.993 v
8 minutes- 6.878 v

Venom Medion (run #2, tested 4879 mah, 9:47 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.405 volts
4 minutes- 7.174 v
6 minutes- 7.025 v
8 minutes- 6.923 v

Reference Charger (run #3, tested 4595 mah, 9:13 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.287 volts
4 minutes- 7.094 v
6 minutes- 6.975 v
8 minutes- 6.839 v

Venom Medion (run #4, tested 4870 mah, 9:46 runtime)

2 minutes- 7.366 volts
4 minutes- 7.142 v
6 minutes- 6.999 v
8 minutes- 6.896 v

Conclusions 2C Balance Charge- The Venom Medion took longer to perform a 2C balance charge (by roughly 15 minutes), but it appeared to give a higher quality charge than our reference. The pack provided both longer runtimes and higher voltages after being 2C balance charged on the Venom.

Misc Notes:

Some of our testers really liked the included USB/LED light, but I didn’t think it provided enough light. I’m an old fart who needs a ton of light to see anything very well so I preferred using a higher powered pit light. However, I must say the provided LED is much better than nothing in a pinch, and it takes up virtually no space on your pit table or in your pit box.

Everyone at the track thought the Venom looked pretty cool, it drew a lot of attention.

The audio quality of the included speakers was about the same as those in a laptop computer, but the Medion could provide more volume. Are the speakers worth having in the battery charger? One of our testers lugs around this huge boombox when he goes bashing or to a track. This particular tester really liked having speakers in the Venom charger, it saved him time, space and energy. Personally, I think having them is very convenient.

The tilted display on the Venom was easy to read and showed all the pertinent info you need.

The Medion yielded some of the highest quality balance charges we’ve seen compared to our reference charger, very impressive. You could literally have a tenth of of a volt more juice on tap simply by using the Medion charger. To some people this may not matter, but to others a tenth of a volt under load is a huge deal.

Downsides:

We would have liked to have seen a volume control on the charger. It would just be more convenient that way.

We would have liked to have seen a second USB output. The Medion comes with one, but if you have the LED light plugged in you’ll need another one to charge your cell phone with.

A 2C non-balance fast charge time of over 60 minutes is simply too long, and yielded poor voltage and runtime numbers compared to our reference. What does this mean to you? Don’t use the “fast charge” mode unless you have to.

Summary:

A = Outstanding/Best in Class, B = Above Average, C = Average, D = Below Average, F = Horrific

Time To Bash: C The Venom comes with a plethora of wires to help get you going on nearly any type of charge duty, but it takes a while getting used to the menu and charge times were on the slow side.

Car Show Rating: B The Venom Medion definitely turned heads in the pits. The red anodized chassis and speakers make for a cool looking charger.

Bash-A-Bility: A We beat on the Medion and ran it full tilt on both channels without letting out any of the magic smoke.

Power: B At 200 watts per channel the Medion is no lightweight.

Value: B The Medion has built in speakers and even comes with an LED pit light adding to its value rating.

BigSquid Rating: B The Venom Medion gets a rock solid B for an overall rating. The Medion is capable of very high quality charges (in balance mode) which should make it a top pick for people looking to get the very best performance out of their Lipo packs. For others, it’s a nice unit because it saves so much space- you get a dual charger, speakers, and a pit light in a relatively small package.