Are fewer bays preferable for charging 18650 batteries?

In trying remedy my charger confusion I have come across a few 'technical' articles on the net which state/imply that single or two bay chargers are, by far, the better way to go in terms of performance but not of course with regard to finances-does this make sense to anyone?

I am not smart enough to know however my interest is piqued reading complaints/comments about different rates/times with various 4 slot chargers-a search here didn't return info, or I did not enter the correct wording.

Help appreciated.

Makes a lot of sense as multiple bay chargers are cheaper the more bays you get as it takes less electronics/cell and less power supplies per battery to support it. The problem with multiple bay chargers is needing additional input power and increasing heat created in the charging process from both the charger and the battery itself being charged. As you have more batteries you increase the current needed overall in the charger which means more heat problems which are often addressed by decreasing the cell charge rates and/or adding fans to the charger. Smaller chargers mean less heat. If a charger has a 2A charging mode then it will probably need around 5v input at 2A to charge one cell... or about 10W of power, 2 cells is 20W.... 4 is 40W.
One advantage is chargers often use DC external power supplies either power bricks of about 12vdc or more or smaller 1-2 cell chargers may include using micro USB inputs but this limits the power of them to about 10W or so charging rates. A 12vdc charger can typically be made to used off an auto power system while micro USB based chargers can but used off USB power busses which can open up more options like power tool USB adapters and car and home USB chargers that are designed for 2A output.

I for sure don't think there is an inherent short fall with 4 vs. 2 slot chargers, if that is what you meant to say in your post. To me it's almost the opposite based on what's currently on the market, all the popular charger/analyzers that I know of are 4 slot. I think the best cylindrical charger on the market by far is the Skyrc MC3000 and it has 4 slots. If you are looking for some specific functionality I think the MC3k is most likely to deliver it since everything is adjustable. The charge current for example is adjustable from .05A to 3.0A, in .01A increments on all four slots independently. To give you a point of reference an Opus Bt-C3100 which is a highly regarded charger on this board gives you these charge current choices, .2A .3A .5A .7A and 1A for 4 slots and an additional 1.5A and 2A for 2 slots. The Xtar VP4 dragon is also quite popular here and another very capable charger/analyzer but it offers a few less charge current options.


I'm a little grey on your needs but I will try and help.


Frank

Appreciate the replies. With the four slot chargers I do read/understand (correctly/incorrectly) that with four batteries the current does vary between bays which is why the position that single or two slot chargers are more reliable/consistent makes some sense to me. Very recently I have made the jump from cr123's to 18650 batteries and should be getting 16 or so in a few days-I held off on a charger due to not really understanding what is best and the info about more bays complicated things even more.

I had intended to get one MC3000 and one or two Dragons but with my 'new' info I decided that I really don't know what I am doing, hence the post. Should there be some real or even perceived advantage with the lesser slot devices I wouldn't mind getting the equivalent capacity in single or dual chargers. I guess one advantage of more lower capacity devices is that a failure would be less of an issue, sort of-just curious as to whether or not more capacity in a single device equals a reduction in reliability or performance.

tom- said:

In trying remedy my charger confusion I have come across a few 'technical' articles on the net which state/imply that single or two bay chargers are, by far, the better way to go in terms of performance but not of course with regard to finances-does this make sense to anyone?

I am not smart enough to know however my interest is piqued reading complaints/comments about different rates/times with various 4 slot chargers-a search here didn't return info, or I did not enter the correct wording.

Help appreciated.

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Either the charger uses a proper CC/CV charging algorithm, or in the least, a very close approximation, or it doesn't?

Everything else is secondary.

Next up would be charging rates for the 1, 2, or 4 bay models.

This is just a function of time/effort and doesn't disqualify a charger for being junk, if it can only properly charge 4 bays at 500mA.

Some people here need 2A/3A charging with even 18650s, but 2A on two of four bays, is more than fine if I'm running the larger 26650, or even 21700s, which I'm not currently doing.

Chris

If you are getting 16 batteries then essentially the overall output in amps of a charger (for all channels combined maximum) is just as important as how many channels there are as a 4 bay that charges 4 batteries at 1A each can match a 2 bay at 2A/bay you just don't have batteries coming off the charger in the same fashion. I have AA/AAA nimh battery chargers that do up to 2A on 2 of the 4 bays and find myself using a 4 bay 500ma/channel smart charger instead as I have plenty of spare batteries and it is a lot easier to use and gentler on batteries.

Why would Xtar recommend in the manual turning off the display while in use for the 4 bay charger but not for the two bay model-or did I misread something ?

For what it is worth; to get me by until I get smarter about smart chargers I got a Fenix ARE 4A and a ARE 2A and got all the 18650's charged. As I was expecting the 2 A got he job done quicker but only by 20 minutes or so similarly, as thought, there was a temp difference between the two with the dT being about 8* F higher in the 4 bay for the batteries but the cases were less than 2* F apart. These were contact measurements with instruments having current cal certs and traceable documentations-being that the surfaces probed were not good conductors I suspect that a relatively modest difference perhaps indicates that the cells themselves were at a significantly higher temp which is what I hope to get some input on and whether or not the 'stand by' drain of leaving batteries in unplugged chargers is characteristic of all brands. The drain was not much-both required about 6 minutes for the display to indicate that charging ended.