GH Power Charger XY-186BS

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This is a very simple and cheap USB powered charger.

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It arrived in a envelope with no accessories, not even an instruction sheet.

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The charger is powered from micro usb.

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On the top is 3 holes for leds, there is a single red and a single green below. The red will be on while charging the green at all other times.

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On the bottom is listed 3 current, I have no idea why.

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The charger uses a fixed slot with a spring, it can handle batteries from 63mm to 68mm, this means unprotected and some protected 18650 cells.

supportedBatteryTypes

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Measurements charger

GH%20Power%20%28SA18650-33%29

The charger uses a CC/CV charging with about 200mA termination current, because it uses a linear regulator it gets too hot when starting on a empty battery and may reduce the current. If the voltage drops too much the charger will use trickle charging.

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This battery do not drop very much when charging terminates and the charger terminates fine.

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GH%20Power%20%28BE18650-26%29

These two are older batteries and will drop in voltage, this means trickle charger.

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Adding a 0.5ohm resistor in series with the cable to simulate a long cable or weak USB power supply will slow the charger down, but not that much.

Temp6852

M1: 34.9°C, HS1: 70.1°C

Temp6853

HS1: 73.1°C

PoweronLiIon

The charger is very simple and do not need any time to initialize.

Voltage%20sweep%200-4.25

Charging profile.

Charge%20Solar%20LiIon

Being a simple charger it works fine with unstable supply.




Conclusion

This charger is very simple and only fit 18650 batteries, it has a problem that it sometimes will trickle charge. To avoid extra wear on the batteries due to that it is best to remove them from the charger within a few hours after charging is finished.
The charge voltage is also at the maximum allowed for LiIon, this by itself it not a problem, but I wonder if some copies of the charger has too high voltage.
The charger works very fine with unstable power supplies, i.e. a solar panel, but there is a single caveat: If the power disappears just before the battery is full, it will switch to trickle charge when the power returns, i.e. the battery will be slightly below a full charge.

For a very cheap charger it works fine and I will rate it fairly good as 18650 charger.



Notes

The charger was supplied by a reader for review.

Here is an explanation on how I did the above charge curves: How do I test a charger
Read more about how I test USB power supplies/charger