Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & NiMH

[vēer]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

I wonder whether spelling "Interllicharger" was unintentional or whether it was intentional due to Sysmax/Nitecore owning rights on Intellicharger name?
Jetbeam in their announcements regarding separation with Sysmax/Nitecore said that Nitecore, without Jetbeams permission, had registered Jetbeams intellectual property under Nitecore trademark.
So, perhaps they didnt want to lose potential customers with giving their charger completely new name, so they picked up the same name but to avoid legal problems they went for misspelled name !

 

[RI Chevy]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

Good point.

 

[jay_rush]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

can this charger fit 3400mah protected 18650s? 2900mah protected 18650s were hard enough in the old i4. and how come on ebay everyone listing this charger says its 110v - 220v and here you say its 240v

 

[selfbuilt]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

can this charger fit 3400mah protected 18650s? 2900mah protected 18650s were hard enough in the old i4. and how come on ebay everyone listing this charger says its 110v - 220v and here you say its 240v

I don't have any 3400mA cells to test. But the cell bay hiehgt tolerances of my i4 PRO are slightly greater than my i4 V2 (maybe up to ~1mm extra for height).

As for the voltage range, "100-240V" is what the manufacturer website specifies, as well as the dealer site who provided the unit for review. In manufacturer specs section of my reviews, I always list what the manufacturer actually reports. In this case, I note the back of the unit specifies "110-220V" input, which may explain why eBay vendors are using that. Note that the output specs on the back of the unit are wrong on my sample.

Either way, the point to the above is that the unit is indeed meant to operate on 110V or 220V systems - they have just expanded the official range on the specs. I suspect this is because there are places in the world that are actually more like ~230V.

 

[fletcher969]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

Their website says "colors: black/ white". So i guess it will be available in black as well.

They are available in black. I purchased one last week, but they're not yet easy to find.

 

[UrbanLegend]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

can this charger fit 3400mah protected 18650s? 2900mah protected 18650s were hard enough in the old i4. and how come on ebay everyone listing this charger says its 110v - 220v and here you say its 240v

Yes, I charged several Orbtronics 3400 mAh protected 18650 batteries with no problems at all. Actually, the longest 18650 battery I have is a BriteStrike 2400 mAh 18650 battery that came with a BriteStrike flashlight/charger combo. That battery barely fits in some of my chargers and almost had to be forced into one of them. Even that batterry fits nicely in the Jetbeam Intellicharger i4 Pro. :thumbsup:

 

[UrbanLegend]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

They are available in black. I purchased one last week, but they're not yet easy to find.

They are selling the black units on Amazon under the product heading: JETBeam IntelliCharger i4 Charger - 2nd Generation - for charging 18650, 16340(RCR123), 14500, etc.

Mine came with the metal spring slides and works great. It is identical to the detailed review at the top of this thread in every way except the color, including the spelling of the word "Interllicharger".

 

[jirik_cz]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

It seems like my white Interllicharger i2 Pro is TRICKLE CHARGING LI-ION batteries. I've intentionally left some cells in the charger for couple of days and after that, they had 4.26V. When I take the cells out immediately after the end of charge is indicated, then they have only 4.19-4.20V.

 

[selfbuilt]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

It seems like my white Interllicharger i2 Pro is TRICKLE CHARGING LI-ION batteries. I've intentionally left some cells in the charger for couple of days and after that, they had 4.26V. When I take the cells out immediately after the end of charge is indicated, then they have only 4.19-4.20V.

That's really bizarre. My charger certainly terminated properly on every run I measured. :thinking:

 

[gradio]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

Their website says "colors: black/ white". So i guess it will be available in black as well.

Yes I got a black one just last month.

I sure do enjoy selfbuilt reviews... a old dummy like me still gains valuable information from them, so I enjoy them while I can.

 

[jirik_cz]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

I've repeated the test with the same results. My jetbeam i2 is definitely trickle charging li-ion batteries. Selfbuilt could you leave some 18650 li-ion batteries in the charger for four days? I'm wondering what will be their voltage after that.

 

[selfbuilt]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

I've repeated the test with the same results. My jetbeam i2 is definitely trickle charging li-ion batteries. Selfbuilt could you leave some 18650 li-ion batteries in the charger for four days? I'm wondering what will be their voltage after that.

Ah, so you are usung the two-cell i2 version? Still, it should perform the same. I will run some cells in my i4 PRO for a couple of days and see what happens.

 

[jirik_cz]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

Yes, I'm using two cell version i2.

 

[selfbuilt]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

Just tested three AW 18650 cells in my i4 PRO.

The first cell was pulled as soon as the charger lights went solid - resting voltage was ~4.20V
The second cell was pulled 24 hours later (charger remained plugged in) - resting voltage was ~4.18V
The third cell was pulled 48 hours after the first (charger remained plugged in) - resting voltage was ~4.19V

So it looks like my charger is remaining properly terminated when the light goes solid, as my earlier direct measures indicated. No sign of trickle charging.

 

[Spazhead]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

great review, thanks

 

[dazler]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

Hello guys, I spotted this thread from google search and decided to register here on CPF.

Firstly, a very nice review, thank you selfbuilt for it!

Secondly, I just bought this "interllicharger" from ebay to be a safer option to recharge my unprotected cells (salvaged from a new laptop battery which had bad electronics and therefore didn't charge) than my trustworthy Trustfire TR-001 charger, and maybe to get few more charge cycles out of the cells too. Unfortunately I'm not so sure about that anymore because I'm having a slight but still nerving overcharging problem with this i4 PRO.

With the Trustfire charger (and my nameless dealextreme backup charger) the charging light turns green when my batteries/cells are at 4.17 to 4.2 volts, depending on the age of the cells. Measured & averaged with two DMM's, although cheapo ones. If I then put the cells to the i4 PRO, it continues the charging process until they are at 4.24 to 4.27 volts! I'm talking about resting voltages measured couple of hours after I have removed them from the charger. After resting some 16 hours the worst battery I have, had gone down from 4.25 to 4.17 volts. It's nearing the end of its life. But the healthier ones were still at 4.24-4.26V range.

The cells never got hot during the charging which gives me little peace of mind, but I'm still wondering if this charger will impact negatively to the lifespan of the cells...getting close to 4.3V can't be very healty for them?

 

[jirik_cz]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

If the cells are more then 4,20V when you pull them out of the charger, it will definitely shorten their lifespan. Seems like I'm not the only one who has overcharging Interllicharger...

 

[dazler]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

If the cells are more then 4,20V when you pull them out of the charger, it will definitely shorten their lifespan. Seems like I'm not the only one who has overcharging Interllicharger...

Yes it seems so. Although my i4 isn't trickle charging in any way. Are you sure yours is? I left one cell in the charger for 24 hours and after that it was at 4.24V. I'm quite sure it would have been around 4.26-4.27 volts if I had removed it straight after the charging was completed.

On the new i4 PRO, the bottom LED is always lit, and the unit cycles through the second and third LEDs to indicate the battery is charging (i.e., they flash on/off, in sequence).

By the way the bottom led isn't always lit, the voltage treshold for it to become solid is just very low. I had one cell at 2.8V when I started to recharge it and all of the three leds were climbing up then and after around half an hour the bottom led became solidly lit. I'm assuming the voltage treshold for the first led to become solid is somewhere just north of 3 volts. Compared to that I took one cell out of the charger just after I noticed the second led being solid and measured the voltage of the cell. It was already at 4.18 volts by then and it couldn't have been more than 5 minutes on that third stage yet... So the leds are pretty useless at least on my unit: If the voltage is under 1st solid led it means the cell is quite deeply discharged. 2nd solid led it means the battery is already full by any cell life prolonging standards. 3rd solid led means it's quite noticeably overcharged. :shrug:

 

[Rexlion]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

If a unit were overcharging, I'd try to return it for an exchange or refund. Overcharging cells is not acceptable IMO.

 

[dazler]

Re: Jetbeam i4 PRO Intellicharger Review: Current/Voltage Comparisons for Li-ion & Ni

If a unit were overcharging, I'd try to return it for an exchange or refund. Overcharging cells is not acceptable IMO.

Agreed. But on the other hand I don't have 100% confidence regarding my cheapo DMM. Only thing I'm sure of is that my Trustfire TR-001 and the other nameless charger is charging the cells to some .05 - .10 lower voltage treshold. Though while doing it the cells are getting noticeably warmer than with the interlllicharger i4 PRO. It seems those cells aren't the source of the heat itself, but the charging circuit which then conducts the heat to the cells via + -terminal. Win some, lose some, I guess.

If I decided to return it, shipping costs would be somewhere near 50% of the price of the whole unit. Oh well. I still have 2 protected 18650 batteries that are working fine and 24 unprotected 18650 cells that are nearly new. Maybe I can afford to fry some life out of them.