Charger NiteCore Intellicharger i1





This charger for Nitecore has a build in EGO charge port, making it useful for vapers. In addition to that port it can also charger normal LiIon cells and has a usb charging output, but it cannot be used as a power bank.



The cardboard box lists lot of specifications, battery types and features.



The box contains the charger with build in mains cable, manual and a warranty card.



The charger is with universal voltage (100-240VAC 50/60Hz), the usb output can deliver up to 1A.



The charger has two status led, the red led is on when charging, the green led at all other times.



The slots uses the usual construction and works well. They can handle batteries from 28mm to 71mm long, that means just about any protected and unprotected LiIon cell.
Depending on the position of the slider the charge current will be 0.5A or 1A, the changeover is around 62mm.



The charger also has a EGO port to charge e-cigarette batteries, it uses the same charge circuit as the charge slot. Charge current is 0.5A, because the slider is below 62mm.





The minimum charge current is 0.5A and that is a bit high for 10440 cells.
The charger can handle 71mm long batteries, inclusive flat top cells.



Measurements

• Around 62 to 63mm battery length it will switch between 0.5A and 1A charging.
• The EGO port uses the same charge circuit as the battery charger.
• The charger will charge with full current from 0V.
• When not powered the charger will discharge with about 3mA
• When powered the charger will always charge.
• Power consumption when idle is 0.45 watt
• Charge will restart charging after power loss or battery insertion.

The charger has a acceptable CC/CV charge profile, but it do never turn the current off.
The led signals done at 100mA current.



Nicely charging, except it never stops.



The charging circuit cannot deliver full current when the battery voltage is low, this is obvious on this chart. This makes the charging slightly slower, but has no other effects.



This battery reach the CV voltage fast, because it is a bit old.




The two smaller cells is charger at 0.5A and the led will signal done at 50mA, but again the current never turns off.



M1: 44,2°C, M2: 59,8°C, HS1: 81,6°C

The electronic inside the charger gets fairly warm, this do heat the battery some.



The charger is very fast at starting, probably because it do not have any microprocessor.



EGO port

I have not done any testing on this port, except to see it uses same charge circuit as above, i.e. I will expect exactly same behavior.
The EGO port is not directly in parallel to the LiIon charge terminals, the center has about 10kohm to the LiIon plus connection.



USB output

• Power consumption when idle is 0.45 watt
• Usb output is turned off while charging, but will turn on when charging is finished.
• Usb output is from powered from mains only, there is no power bank function.
• Usb output is rated for 1A, but the overload protectionis very sensitive and may prevent drawing 1A.
• Usb output is coded as Apple 1A

The charger has a overload protection sligtly above 1A. The efficiency is not that great.



The charger would not deliver 1A into my load, instead I did the load test at 0.9A and the charger handled that fine.
The temperature photos below are taken between 30 minutes and 60 minutes into the one hour test.



M1: 46,6°C, M2: 39,3°C, HS1: 68,6°C
The low efficiency means the charger get fairly hot.



M1: 60,9°C, HS1: 66,9°C



M1: 46,4°C, M2: 43,3°C, HS1: 63,1°C



M1: 65,1°C, M2: 45,7°C, HS1: 72,0°C



There is some noise in the output: 87mV rms and 550mVpp



There is not much change when the load is increased: 95mV rms and 480mVpp


Testing the mains input with 2500 volt and 5000 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.



Conclusion

With buildin mains transformer this charger is a fairly compact solution to charging LiIon batteries and many vapers will probably be happy with the EGO port.
The charger charges fine, except that it does not stop charging when the battery is full, as long as the charged battery is removed within a few hours it is not a problem. Leaving the battery in the charger will slowly wear it down.
The usb output works fine, but is a bit sensitive about the current. It will handle equipment that has moderate current requirement fine.

Due to the missing termination I will only rate this charger acceptable.



Notes

The charger was supplied by a Nitecore 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 and chargers