hp50g and power bank

[TravisE]

(03-29-2017 03:10 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  I've been very happy with my BC-700 and never heard of the MH-C9000. For around $50 the MH-C9000 offers 19 charging currents from 200mA to 2000mA and an additional "Break-In" mode.

Some reviews from 6 years ago complain about the charge cycle.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/show...ve-charger
It sounds like there was an older model without the independent -deltaV end-of-charge detection feature. Anybody have experience with this possibly newer version?

I've used the C9000 for a number of years (mainly because it was the first charger of its type I happened to come across) and have had no real issues with charging. The complaints in that thread mainly seem to be regarding how early the charger terminates the main charge and drops to a top-up charge. As I recall, very early C9000 units had an issue with not terminating (and therefore over-charging) cells sometimes, especially when charging at a lower-than-recommended rate (which could make the delta-V signal too small for the unit to detect). To address the problem, an additional termination condition was programmed into the charging algorithm of later C9000s which causes them to terminate as soon as cell voltage rises to 1.48v. This makes it charge more conservatively and drop to top-up mode sooner than older units. But this means that to get a “full” charge, the top-up can take an additional hour or two, and this seems to be what some people complain about.

This change happened rather early in the product's life (I purchased my first C9000 in 2008, and it was already the “fixed” version), so you'd have to have a very early unit to worry about the termination problem.

If I remember correctly, current C9000s will stop charging at delta-V, at 1.48 volts, if the cells reach too high a temperature, or if the charge continues for too long (I forgot what the interval was), whichever occurs first.

In practice, I don't feel the top-up charge really makes that big of a difference, especially in a relatively undemanding device like the 50g. My only real complaint of the C9000 is that it doesn't like aged cells very much and is pretty quick to reject them as being defective if the internal resistance is getting a bit high, even if they are still healthy enough to run low-power devices like the 50g. (The analyze and discharge modes will give highly inaccurate results if the internal resistance is anything less than optimal, even at the lowest 100mA discharge rate, even if the cells work fine in a normal device that uses 100 mA.)

I've personally never used the La Crosse chargers, though I've heard many, many reports several years ago about certain models failing and (literally) melting down. Yikes.