Test/review of Golisi S6

[size=+3]Golisi S6[/size]





Golisi has made a couple of chargers, this is a 6 slot LiIon and NiMH charger that can charge with up to 2A.



It arrived in a black very stylish cardboard box, there is some specifications on the back.



The box included the charger, a power supply and the instruction sheet.



The power supply is a 12V 3A unit.



The charger has a 12V 3A DC input connector.



The user interface is one buttons and a large display.
The button do not affect the charge, but can be used to select between V, mAh and time on the display.
It will also turn on the background light after it turns off.
It is possible to keep the background light on, just hold the button down for a few seconds and the auto-off feature is disabled. This is not explained in the manual!



During power on all the segments are shown.



Default display during charge, it will show percent and voltage.



First press on the button will change to mAh



And second press to time.



On the bottom of the charger there are specifications.



3 slots are marked as 2A slot, I would have like a more visible marking. Luckily the actual charge current can easily be seen on the display when the charger is working.



The slots uses the classical slider construction and it works fine.
The slots can work from 32.5 mm to 71.5mm. This nearly covers anything.








The charger can handle 70 mm long batteries including flat top cells.





[size=+2]Measurements[/size]

• Discharge LiIon battery with 2mA when not connected to power.
• Discharge NiMH battery with 0.25mA when not connected to power.
• When power is connected with a full battery, it will charge with about 0.6mA.
• Below 0.4 volt the charger will report error
• Below 2V the charger will assume NiMH
• Above 2V the charger will assume LiIon.
• Display turns off after 60 seconds.
• Below about 0.7 volt the voltmeter is not very precise.
• Meter cannot measure between 1.6V and 2.0V, there it will show 1.6V
• Voltmeter stops updating when charging is stopped and will not show above 4.20V
• Voltmeter is within 0.04V
• With only LiIon in 2A slots the charger will charge at 2A
• With LiIon in both 1A and 2A slots the charger current may be reduced to 1A (The total is either 4A or 5A, depending on slots).
• Charger will not increase current when a battery is full, only when it is removed.
• NiMH is always charged at 0.5A
• Charger will restart when voltage drops below 4V.
• It will restart charging on reinsertion of the battery or power cycling.
• Power consumptions when idle without battery is 0.3 watt

[size=+1]Charging LiIon[/size]

Charge current is 2A or 1A, depending on slot and number of batteries.



This is a 2A slot, it has a nice CC/CV charge curve with about 130mA termination current.



Next slot is a 1A slot and again a nice CC/CV charge curve.



Display shows 3388mAh 2:24



Display shows 3238mAh 3:34



Display shows 3223mAh 3:58



All the slots look like good CC/CV curves with terminations around 130mA
Display shows 3289mAh 2:27




Display shows 2570mAh 2:52



Display shows 2721mAh 3:19



Some other batteries, including a old one is handled fine.
Display shows 2036mAh 3:29



A larger cell with higher current capabilities is charger fast in a 2A slot.
Display shows 3121mAh 1:40



With 6 cell all slots are reduced to 1A slots.
#1 Display shows 3276mAh 3:27
#2 Display shows 3265mAh 3:24
#3 Display shows 3387mAh 3:26
#4 Display shows 3473mAh 3:35
#5 Display shows 3290mAh 3:27
#6 Display shows 3368mAh 3:33



The charger is using about 2.9A from the 3A supply when charging 6 cells.
#1 Display shows 3223mAh 3:23
#2 Display shows 3491mAh 3:32
#3 Display shows 3343mAh 3:28
#4 Display shows 3319mAh 3:34
#5 Display shows 3355mAh 3:22
#6 Display shows 3403mAh 3:36



M1: 42.0°C, M2: 46.7°C, HS1: 56.4°C



M1: 36.6°C, M2: 38.5°C, M3: 39.1°C, M4: 39.7°C, M5: 40.4°C, M6: 38.0°C, HS1: 53.2°C



The charger needs about 3 seconds to initialize.



[size=+1]Charging NiMH[/size]

Charge current is always 0.5A with NiMH



It looks like the charger stops on voltage here, but not before the battery is full as can be seen on the temperature curve. There is a two hour top-off charge.
Display shows 1525mAh 3:42



This looks like a -dv/dt charging and it is a bit slow stopping.
Display shows 1863mAh 4:33



Display shows 1607mAh 3:55



Display shows 1934mAh 4:44



Display shows 1597mAh 3:53



How the charger terminates varies a bit, but all cells are terminated within an hour after they a full.
Display shows 1881mAh 4:36



Display shows 2085mAh 5:06



Display shows 2294mAh 5:38
The two high capacity cells are terminated nicely.



The AAA cell look fine.
Display shows 665mAh 1:33



A full cell is detected in 10 minutes, it also gets a 2 hour top-off charge.
Display shows 112mAh 0:10



The charger can easily handle 6 NiMH cells.
#1 Display shows 1760mAh 4:18
#2 Display shows 1709mAh 4:10
#3 Display shows 1694mAh 4:08
#4 Display shows 1845mAh 4:30
#5 Display shows 1650mAh 4:01
#6 Display shows 1894mAh 4:38



This requires about 0.8A from the power supply.
#1 Display shows 1666mAh 4:03
#2 Display shows 1738mAh 4:14
#3 Display shows 1787mAh 4:22
#4 Display shows 1685mAh 4:06
#5 Display shows 1687mAh 4:07
#6 Display shows 1780mAh 4:21



M1: 34.4°C, M2: 35.6°C, HS1: 42.7°C



M1: 32.7°C, M2: 34.0°C, M3: 34.3°C, M4: 34.9°C, M5: 34.5°C, M6: 33.4°C, HS1: 38.3°C



NiMH also needs about 3 seconds to initialize.




The top-off charge uses 1 second pulses of 0.5A about every 20 seconds, this is an average current of 25mA.




Testing with 2830 volt and 4242 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.



[size=+2]Conclusion[/size]

This is a good charger for both LiIon and NiMH batteries, but due to the charger current it is not for smaller LiIon cells. The current selection depends on the used slots (for LiIon) and the display shows actual charge current, it is also nice with the charged mAh, but I am not happy about the automatic turn off of the display. You have to press a button to see if the charger is finished!



[size=+2]Notes[/size]

The charger was supplied by Golisi for review.

Here is an explanation on how I did the above charge curves: How do I test a charger

Too bad about the long 2hr top off charge. Its a bit excessive to me waiting to finish up. Maybe an update is in order after these points need fixing.

tripplec said:

Too bad about the long 2hr top off charge. Its a bit excessive to me waiting to finish up. Maybe an update is in order after these points need fixing.

Click to expand...

Generally you do not have to wait for the top-off charge, the purpose is to get the maximum capacity from the cells.
Without waiting you got a full cell, but the capacity is slightly low and when the charger terminates on -dv/dt the slightly low is not really relevant.

I have read many of your review but skip the single cell and USB ones. I laugh them especially 1 cell ones. Mostly 2 or 4 are charged at a time so buying something smaller is pointless. Its not like it has to fit in a pocket. Thats off topic...

Other topping off chargers were very short times & low currents, 100mA or less on NiMH cells. But for some time this was the first to require a wait for a full cell. I'd rather have a charger stop a hair early and done than one still dragging on topping up the cell. It seems good for the Protected LiION I have which are over 70mm. Finding a source them and pricing would be interesting to see how its positioned in the market.

I see the S4 chargers available on eBay but no S6. I assume the S6 is newer and/or different.