As a flashlight enthusiast, you might be interested in this new professional battery charger and analyzer for checking and maintaining your batteries.
The full review is available here
English review at BudgetLightForum
German review on my website
Summary
For many years, the SkyRC MC3000 has been considered one of the best chargers for round batteries. The user has full control over the charging process and can set not only the charging current but also many other parameters. It can also connect to a PC or smartphone for settings and data logging.
And here comes the new SkyRC MC5000!
I was really looking forward to the SkyRC MC5000: a modern design with a large color display, innovative scroll-wheel input, charging currents of up to 5 A per slot, Bluetooth connectivity and advanced analysis features.
All in all, everything has worked so far, but the range of functions still seems somewhat limited. Many enhancements could potentially be introduced through firmware updates, such as expanded parameter ranges, more effective use of the status LEDs and possibly even support for 1.5V Li-ion batteries. The absence of program memory slots is particularly disappointing. At this price point, a PC interface for control and data logging should also be included.
In its current form, the SkyRC MC5000 is still a long way from being a real successor for the MC3000. It is not a bad device by any means, but it does not yet fully meet the expectations I have for a professional charger in this class.
And I'm over here like "red light turned to green so I'm good."
I'm glad you guys know and do all this battery stuff because you create a wealth of knowledge I can pull from when the time comes. Speaking from my experience with flashlights, which I am still in awe of the knowledge and how useful it is/was when it came time for a new light.
Thanks for the review.
🤝
I am willing to spend money on the best battery charger that doesn't require me to know anything about batteries. I know the value of having tools over which you have fine control and can tune, but that's, like 0.01% of all the tools I use - the rest, I have at best superficial knowledge of the field, and have no time or interest in becoming an expert; and giving me fine grained control over the tool is only increasing the chance that I'm going to damage something.
To me, value is in the tool knowing more than I do, and doing the right thing. For battery chargers, that usually means a toggle for fast/slow charging. I know enough to know that faster charging is usually less healthy for the battery, so if I have time, slow. If I've run myself out of batteries, fast.
And I'm not even sure that rule holds for modern batteries! It's something I learned so long ago I should be suspicious about the knowledge.
So, yeah. I'm sure this is great for some people, but for me, charge me more because the charger is smarter than I am, not because it's dumber.
Several chargers in the $20-40 price range measure the battery's internal resistance and pick a reasonable charge current based on that. Many of those have an override for charge current but it would be convenient to have the option of just fast or slow based on that measurement.
The rule still holds. Charging fast is harder on batteries. It's true for phone batteries too, so all these new phones with three-digit charging wattage are likely to wear out quickly.