For real, they want everyone charging lipo, cell phones, tablets or cells for flashlights super fast. Only kills them quicker and has you buying more sooner.
I have a little cheap 50W Prophet mini sport from Horizon Hobby, It's 2 - 4S capable and 1 - 4amps, With 3 batteries I can pretty much fly all day using that one 30 dollar charger lol
I have a cheap 200w that'll let me charge my 4s batteries at 5a if I charge both or 10a if I'm doing one at a time. Awesome little charger that can have my cars up and running in less than an hour no matter which I want to drive
Literally just bought my first charger from you guys 2 days ago after borrowing one for a few months. Looks like this one is definitely better than the hi tech one I ordered
@@AidanMorris It is an awesome charger you bought! I own a few, you have to remember this is a marketing video...The Hitec has a ton more features! Talking and Bluetooth are my favorites
I'll stick to my Hota D6 Pro. It has a 1.6A balance circuit, meaning once in balance mode, it'll finish the cycle a lot faster. Plus it's cheaper. The reason nobody is buying this is there are better chargers out there for the money. Amain just doesn't sell them.
Hota s6 here, 1.6a balance current is hard to beat for an ac/DC charger. The imars d300 has 1.2a which isn't bad compared to most chargers, but like you said the hota will balance much faster.
I have the D6 pro, it worked well for few months, but lately it started making problems during the balance. It just takes a lot of time to complete balancing.
I wasn't happy with the charger and sent it back. For example, there was a bug when you select storage mode and want to start it, the charger does not recognize the G-Tech battery. You have to plug in the battery first, stop charging and then select Storage in the menu. It also bothered me that you can't extend the balancer cable and has to plug it directly into the charger if you want to use G-Tech. It would be perfect if a menu pops up when you connect the G-Teck battery and you can choose what you want to do (charging, storage mode, etc.). This would really be a smart charger
Guys STOP buying brands proprietary batteries and chargers! Just let the few newbies buy them and starve the companies doing the money grab of your money. Also they’re extremely easy to bypass to use any charger.
Seriously, there is no need for any of that stuff. It's really not hard to learn how to care for and maintain batteries. The only thing anybody should be using is a standard charger like the D300, with bullets or XT60/XT90 connectors. Proprietary connectors are 100% designed to stop you from observing the health of the battery and lock you into buying more proprietary junk. Traxxas, for example, really doesn't want you to check the IR of their packs, or monitor the balance. Fishy.
“Money grab” is such a stupid concept. Everyone wants money. No one does anything for free. If there is money to be grabbed, you would grab the money too.
@@PigglyWigglyDeluxe Way to make excuses for the greedy. If it was me, I would just offer quality products engineered to last, and perform, at competitive prices. Then I would accept whatever share of the market that got me. You know, kinda like how things used to be, back when things were expected to be worth their price. But if you'd rather be aggressively marketed to by greedy corporations with overpriced, underperforming products that needlessly force you into a constrained ecosystem solely for the purpose of limiting your alternatives in order to preserve their ability to keep extracting more and more money from you in exchange for constantly decreasing quality, then I guess you do you. Someone has to buy the crap.
@@PigglyWigglyDeluxe it’s definitely a money grab. Look at these car companies charging you to be able to use the remote start and heated seats now. It’s like if you bought a Ford but can only buy approved Ford gas for twice the price. It went from all vehicles being able to go to any gas station to not. RCs used to be able to use any battery and chargers charged any battery. I mean they still do but now you have to do extra steps if you want to. Most new people surely have to be turned off by buying these proprietary batteries for 2-4x the price of other lipos.
This is like people complaining that an apple watch doesn't work with android lmao, imagine some random telling others "GUYS STOP BUYING IPHONES" make your own phones or buy android!, they all have their pros and cons, after 5 universal chargers, for me the traxxas charger is the best one I have ever had and I can afford paying extra for the convenience of clicking a button and dealing with balance connectors, so it is a big +1 from me.
hey Bret. have to say you are wrong about the traxxas charger. i do have hyperon charger. but to let you know the traxxas charge i own will charge all my batteries. so it is the traxas dual charger. it is nothing fancy. but work very well in a pinch. as i have several kinds of li-po names traxxas floureon max amps. i use only 2 the traxxas and the hyperion eos7201. so thought you should know. not all of traxxas chargers are closed only brand. thanks and have a great day
Hitec X2 Plus Black Edition is still my Favorite in that price Range! Its has some great features. Talks out loud, Bluetooth, an App. 😀 Has some dummy proof safety features. Automatically slow charges a low discharged lipo until it gets back into the acceptable range and then cranks amps back up...other chargers you have to manually charger low discharged lipo on Nihm to bring to life and then charge normal.
A lot of Hitek is just rebranded Chinese products. Chinese manufacturing can be the best quality since all charger even the top of the line $500 chargers are made in China
Why am I just now hearing about this? I currently have all Traxxas vehicles and while I don’t mind the Traxxas connector, I don’t like being locked into Traxxas batteries. I do have some Texas connector I can install on other batteries but then I lose the smart functionality which I really want to keep! I think imma have to look into this stuff because this looks like it mostly solves all my issues.
You can give it more power with DC PSU correct? What are people running for DC on these? Can I buy a DC PSU for this somewhere? Ebay maybe? I think the AC power is great when moving around, compact etc but at home I wouldn't mind upping it's power with a DC PSU for my larger lipo packs.
I have two of these bad boys just got into the rc car hobby waiting on my car to come in the battery's and charger came in first lol ended up with the dbxl -e 2.0 wanted to go big lol wonder how long before I crash
The toolkit M6D is a damn good charger for the money as well. 2 channels each at 250 watts or 15 amps per channel- or sync them up to charge at 25 amps. 80 bucks. Awesome bang for the buck. Bought mine through Amain as well.
I’ve got an M6D and I really need to start taking it to the field it’s so much more compact than what I normally lug with me, I just need to bring adapters for non XT-60 batteries. I’ve been liking my ISDT q6 so much as my “big” charger but the M6D actually puts out more if you share the channels.
HTRC T400 Pro is better than most other chargers on the market that I can see - the fact that you can save "templates" of your common batteries and charge jobs is awesome... Now just to find one in the US...
I also bought a HOTA D6 Pro several years ago, it cost about the same price, it's also a 300 watt charger. I wish Amain had been selling that charger at the time, I only knew about it because I stumbled upon it. This was back when the Venom Duo Pro was all the rage even though it cost more and could only charge 150 watts.
Industry standard is the way to go. Proprietary connnector and chip are definitely proprietary. Think about that camera/phone/electronic with some sort of proprietary connector. Sitting in the drawer because its not compatible with anything. Make it an industry standard that negligibly impact price and then well talk.
I've been saying this for years, we need a standardized plug for charging and the balance lead needs to be integrated into the main not it's own separate plug. But this will never happen because of the big names in the industry like Traxxas and Horizon wanting their own tech. ISDT actually tried to get everyone to switch over to their Battgo system a few years ago but it flopped as no one jumped on board with them, that same tech is what Horizon uses in their Spektrum Smart chargers and batteries. From what I remember Spektrum has an exclusive deal with ISDT now and they are the only ones who can use it........................................
OK, OK! Didn't know there was a new one. Picked up an iMars Dual last year when they were on sale at my local hobby shop. Great charger. Great batteries. Getting this smart one now. Honestly, didn't know. I bypassed it several times because it looks so much like the the Dual.
I bought the dual myself a couple of months ago but days before the released of the new version and I just wasn't going to send mine back and go through all of that. There should have been something on amain website that there was a new one being released I would have held off and got the new one.
Great video! Much appreciated!! If I didn't already have the Hota S6 (400w/$160=40cents/watt) I'd be all over the Gens 300watt charger.. maybe I need a backup? LOL! Keep up the great content Brett!! BTW, Kudos to Gens Tattu for the the G-tech technology, revolutionary!! I see they are now offering G-tech equipped 4s packs. I didn't realize the G-tech balance plug is compatible w/JST equipped chargers, awesome!!
Everyone keeps saying you can only charge traxxas batteries with the traxxas charger but I have a few different batteries and I charge all of them on my traxxas chargers all you need is adapters which is what you would need for any charger
Haha a-main, well now this charger is out of stock EVERYWHERE including a-main, do to your video? lol. I do like how their smart batteries still work with normal dumb chargers that is really cool... uses a normal balance lead with an extra pin for their chargers, thats cool. Traxxas and Spektrum batteries are annoying!
I just bought my second htrc 400w 1-6s battery charger last night it’s was $98 I had the earlier generation one it was 150w I believe for $70 and don’t get mad at me a main! I ordered a pile of parts from you guys to 😂
Haha, it's all good. But take note: the T400 is 400W on DC power and only 200W on AC power (the naming is misleading). That equals out to 49 cents per watt - more expensive than the D300. -Brett
@@markg7030I actually really like the EZ Peak Dual, it's got 8a at 100w on one channel and 4a on two channels. I'm poor at the moment so I use that charger for my 2wd Modified buggy, does the job and I got it for free a while ago
No one's buying it because the sub-$150 300W charger space is _saturated_ ; there's just too many offerings from unknown clones that do the same for half the price.
Gtech sounds interesting but I still like the Spektrum batteries for the detailed logs stored on the battery chip, telemetry back to a Spektrum radio for voltage, temperature etc, fault logs, charge cycles and programmable self storage discharging if you forget to use it. The older Gen1 S2100 is extremely compact and easy to travel with.
Yeah it’s ISDT battgo rebranded for Spektrum. Spektrum did integrate the battery info nicely though into their transmitter telemetry like individual cell voltages without having to any additional sensors.
@@hayes4424 If you have a Spektrum radio and electronics it will transmit battery voltage, individual cell voltage, temperature, amperage draw, min/max from the model back to your tx screen. The battery also self records how many charge cycles it has had as well as any faults such as overheating, overcharging, over discharging. It also will self discharge automatically down to 3.8 volts per cell after a set amount of days if you forget and leave it in charged state. Both of these parameters are programmable by the end user.
Too bad this doesn’t have a memory function where you can save let’s say 10 programs (cells, amps, etc.) for non g-tech batteries. This is a fairly basic function that makes this one worse for non g-tech batteries than other chargers.
That's a really nice charger. I just bought the hi-tech black edition & like that as well. But again your locked in with their battery system & the price of their batteries.
I❤️the HiTec X2 Black Edition I have a few of them and they get the job done. None have died. They have some dummy proof features that add safety. They also automatically slow charge when voltage in a lipo is super low well beyond lipo discharge specs...and will safely slow charge until in range and then go full speed. It talks to say your batteries are done.
It is easy to calculate the voltage a charger will charge at. The formula is Wattage divided by volage. So take your 6 cell lipo, nominal volage 22.2 volte divided into the wattage 300w. 300/22.2 = 13.51amps. So if you know what the nominal voltage of you pack and the wattage of the charger you can solve for top charging amps. If the charger says it will only charge up to X voltage and that is lower, then is is not using all the wattage because it is limited by the weakest component in the charger. They don't want to be sued if it catches fire.
The hoto s6 is a brilliant charger, much better and cheaper then any of these chargers here. What do you need more this this charger? Input Voltage: AC100-240V / DC 10.5-30V Charge Current: 0.1-15Ax2. Charge Power DC 325Wx2(650W) AC 400W(Support power distribution) Discharge Power: Internal discharge: 15Wx2(balance port 10Wx2) External discharge: 325Wx2 Battery Type: LiHv/LiPo/LiFe/Lilon/Lixx : 1-6S NiZn/Nicd/NiMH : 1-16S Smart Battery : 1-6S Lead Acid(Pb) : 2-24V Eneloop : 1-16S Balance Current: 1600mAx2 Discharge Current: 0.1-3Ax2 External Discharge Current: 1-22A USB Output: 5V / 2.1A Dimensions: 116×116x85mm Weight: 800g
Pssst .... Watts = Volts times Amps. Watts / Volts = Amps. Watts / Amps = Volts. It's simple math. So when you say that if a 10 amp charger doesn't have the Watts, then it's not really 10 amps, you're just wrong. If it didn't have the watts, it would be because it doesn't have the voltage. If you have 10 amps, the only way you can change the watts is to change the voltage. It's math and the way you present the subject, it's clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. Also, if you charge a Li-Ion too fast, it will reduce the life of the cell. If you feed it grossly too many amps, it will get hot and start burning. So more better without limits. Look up the C rating of a cell to see the max charge rate for that cell. Lithium cells must be charged at the correct voltage so the only thing you can change is the amps. Volts times Amps is Watts, so talking about Watts in a fixed voltage or current system, is like saying I'd like to buy 10 MPG times 40 miles worth of gas.
Hi, what is your opinion of the Spektrum S2200 G2 AC 2x200W Smart Charger? I know it's costly but I really like the idea of getting rid of that balance lead.
It's a nice charger and the Spektrum Smart system is really convenient for worry-free charging. It is a little more costly but it's definitely recommended. -Brett
They should make balance lead connectors with a blank programmable board inside where you could install it on any battery and the first time you plug it up it asks you for the battery details and saves it to the chip.
I have an electron pro and it charges all batteries, from gens ace to tatu, 2s to 6s . takes a minute but if the battery is storage charged it takes less .
I have a Primal charger that came in a lot of parts i bought. It does both NiMh and lipo batteries and it works phenomenal. It wasnt expensive when it was new either. I also have the traxxas id charger for my traxxas id batteries and it works great.
A battery pack and charger should not cost more than the vehicle itself. You buy the vehicle, but then to power it up to be able to use it and charge it shouldn’t be like buying the vehicle twice. Not a fan of any charger over $100 . They are just chargers.
i could care less about charge times honestly, easy to accomadate, what i care about is automatic storage mode. i hate worrying about getting my batteries to 30% charge to put them away
Any proprietary i ant buy f traxas and all company that operate like apple samslung sony and the huge lot of ant repair anti consumer thinking its just well evil
Its hilarious to me how we all know ichargers are clearly the best in this industry atm, yet they don’t get any mainstream coverage. I’ll stick with my icharger and I’m sure any one else who has one will tell you the same.
@@maornavon2231 no just DC chargers last time I checked…. Everyone is scared of dc chargers when they’re just getting started in RC. Everyone wants to win the race driving down a cheap and easy straight road, and learn the hard way that it doesn’t work like that.
People keep saying proprietary this and that. He literally said it will still charge any other battery too. Xt60 to whatever adapters are pretty cheap. I run xt60 on all my stuff anyways, so it's a great deal for me. Right now i run 2 lectron pro acdc-10a chargers, one is starting to crap out. I saw this video at the perfect time. Plus amain has pretty good customer support
I’ve got gens ace basher 4s 11000mah 14.8v. So with what your mentioning this the best bang for the buck dual changer my batteries? I also will be getting a few other pairs of gens 3s 8000mah 11.1v they won’t charge on my Traxxas charger so I’m done with Traxxas bats and chargers
AC-powered chargers can't output very many amps or watts because the AC-to-DC power supply in them isn't very large. If you want lots of amps and watts, get a DC-only charger and a pair of hot-swappable Dell server power supplies.
I’m a DC guy. My charger of choice is the ISDT Q6 Nano. 100w for $40, or 200w if you run on 24v, & I currently use 5 on a 12v supply. I would absolutely not recommend running DC for your first setup, and if you want to go bigger than I’d definitely say the d300 is a good starter choice.
I like my isdt Q8, but I prefer the ToolkitRC M6D for the price and performance. 2 channels and 500watts is about as good as it gets for the price. Look for the DC version.
@@slick2500 yea they really should’ve just made it two independent buttons. I’m pretty sure that’s what it is underneath and the charge start is just holding both. I’ve been able to use them well enough though that I don’t mind for the price.
@@thebirdman99 as I understand it, it is exclusive to spektrum and ISDT isn’t allowed to ship battgo enabled chargers anymore. I’ve bought newer isdt chargers that advertise battgo and don’t ship with despite advertising it
