Charger upgrade,

[honwal]

Just about fed up with charger that came with 450x hour to charge one battery,
i have looked on eBay and Amazon and to be honest I gave myself headache with what to pick,
i need something tried and tested that will work straight out of box to charge ec3 batteries,
budget fifty quid, looking for recomendations
thanks

[Peteski]

This for £30:-

Turnigy Reaktor 250W 10A 1-6S Balance Charger

It's an exact clone of an iCharger 106B+ which is very good. If you don't like HK stuff, you can get the iCharger version for £55 here:-

iCharger 106B+ 250W 6s Balance/Charger [106B+]

You will need a power supply too, something like this:-

Junsi iCharger P350 Power Supply 350W 15V 23A [P350]

or the HK version like this:-

Turnigy Reaktor Pro 350W 23A Power Supply (100~240V AC)

If you go for the HK versions you are just about on budget and it's a great setup for charging 450 size batteries like yours. I have the iCharger version and it's been faultless. Finally you also need a parallel board like this for your EC3 batteries:-

Hobbyking Parallel charging Board for 6 packs 2~6S (EC3)

[honwal]

Cheers Pete, nice bit of future proofing with those set ups,
I like the HK set up around my budget, I noticed they only have it available in the international warehouse, by that do they mean China, never dealt with them before,

[myxiplx]

The advice I would give is to stretch to a branded charger if you can afford it, especially since you're flying reasonable size packs with a 450.

I've had two cheap chargers, one failed on me, and the other was charging one cell in my LiPos way too high, if I hadn't spotted what it was doing it could easily have damaged my packs (or worse caused a fire). A good charger will last you for years, and can be used for several models, it really is better to buy a decent one if you can afford it.

[honwal]

The advice I would give is to stretch to a branded charger if you can afford it, especially since you're flying reasonable size packs with a 450.

I've had two cheap chargers, one failed on me, and the other was charging one cell in my LiPos way too high, if I hadn't spotted what it was doing it could easily have damaged my packs (or worse caused a fire). A good charger will last you for years, and can be used for several models, it really is better to buy a decent one if you can afford it.

Is there a decent charger that is all in one, not having to buy separate units, one that works straight out of box,

[Grumpy]

Is there a decent charger that is all in one, not having to buy separate units, one that works straight out of box,

It depends on what you mean by 'decent'? If decent means powerful enough to do reasonably fast charges on larger LiPos then no, all in one chargers are all a bit lacking in sheer power.

[honwal]

Just been looking at imax b6 v2 80w would this be considered a good upgrade

[Grumpy]

An 80W charger is enough if all you want to do is charge one or two 3s 2200mAh batteries, but it doesn't give you much room for growth if you ever got a bigger heli.

Be carefull when looking at the imax B6 chargers. Many are 'clone' copies of poorer quality than the genuine SkyRC originals. Only buy from reputable dealers who state they are the genuine SkyRC version.

[honwal]

An 80W charger is enough if all you want to do is charge one or two 3s 2200mAh batteries, but it doesn't give you much room for growth if you ever got a bigger heli.

Be carefull when looking at the imax B6 chargers. Many are 'clone' copies of poorer quality than the genuine SkyRC originals. Only buy from reputable dealers who state they are the genuine SkyRC version.

I will thanks

[Peteski]

The advice I would give is to stretch to a branded charger if you can afford it, especially since you're flying reasonable size packs with a 450.

I would normally agree with this advice, but I believe that particular Turnigy charger I linked to is actually made by iCharger for HK i.e. it's a 106B+ re-branded as Turnigy. So it should be fine, but I know some of the other HK branded chargers are rubbish. But I did actually buy the official iCharger branded version in the end just to be sure! It's a great charger too and not that expensive at £55, although it is double that when you include the branded power supply. But again the Turnigy version looks identical to the iCharger P350 I have.

honwal - I did look at AC/DC chargers too and basically none of them have a very good reputation. So I went with the above iCharger as it's a well proven quality brand.

[Jez N]

Unfortunately £50 doesn't get you much. But my advice is get the best charger you can afford even if you have to wait a few months and increase your budget.

Maj an had a revolectric charge 500w for sale for £75 and a secondhand pay charger is going to be around £25-30

icharger are cheaper and what I use. Great chargers.

[Grumpy]

The Turnigy Reaktor chargers are hard to overlook IMHO. They are just iChargers sold with a different label and at a much cheaper price. I'd wholeheartedly agree with the previous comment to get the best charger you can stretch to because it will pay off in the long run if you stay in the hobby.

[Paz26181]

Putting cost aside, I feel much safer and comfortable using a known and well tested branded charger in a home. Lipos and chargers are a hazardous combination

[honwal]

Thanks for info,
i have bought the Imax b6 v2 for now, just to get me away from stock charger,
after a While I will be getting the charger Pete suggested from hobby king, looks a good package

[Grumpy]

The B6 will be a lot better than the one that comes with the RTF heli, so you will notice a big improvement. It will run out of 'oomph' if you want to charge bigger batteries, but that's a problem for another day i guess!

The other drawback of low rated chargers is that they have chronically low discharge power, so if you want to use them for discharging batteries to storage voltage you have to be VERY patient, but at least is will do storage voltage discharging which is more than your current charger will do!