Been using it for a few weeks. No real issues yet and I’ve been doing 30A and occasionally 40A charging and regenerative discharging.
If you have multiple cell groups balancing hard (large Lipo cells, 21700 or larger lithium ion or large prismatic LiFePO4 cells) you might run into temperature problems when charging or discharging above ~20A. The fan is probably the only weakness of the whole device…but that should be evident looking at the size of this 400-1100W charger. Most 300W Benchtop power supplies are quadruple the size of this and their fan is at least twice the size. So you should expect that this tiny box is going to struggle to dissipate the heat. I will say the heatsink is pretty good although I wish a copper version was available. Further if you can find a more powerful fan that the iCharger will run I would recommend considering a swap.
Comparing this to other chargers it’s obvious the interface is superior. A little difficult to get used to but after 3 days I’d say I could navigate it without thinking or referring to the manual. Haven’t used the PC software yet but I think I should. Adding your own presets would be a pain in the butt to do with the scroll wheel.
The only charger that looks to be similar in $/watt is the ToolKitRC M8P but after owning an M8S I’m a little hesitant to buy another one of their products. Not as refined as the iCharger line. I like my PowerLab 8 but it feels a bit antiquated and has safeties in place such as requiring balance leads for high rate charging.
Was hesitant to order refurbished but now I’d say I’m going to order all my chargers refurbished if the price savings is >10%. Saving about 30% on an S6 is a no brainer.
This review was made by someone charging lithium ion and LiFePO4, not Lipos. So take that into consideration. IMO this is a great tool for someone working with LiFePO4 at the cell level as you can’t get a 1S-6S charger that is fully adjustable up to 40A for this price unless you buy a converted server power supply off Aliexpress. And then you’re missing out on the balancing features and the regenerative discharge which is the major selling point.