Reveja: Toolkit RC M4Q 4-port mains/DC battery charger

Bem – and this is the toolkit rc m4q, m4q quad, smart charger and it's a it's, a cheap charger, it's not expensive at all, and the big benefit of this one is well. It runs on mines or it'll run on dc input. Let me show you what i mean: okey, so here's the little unit itself, it's not unattractive, but it's, not particularly styling. It doesn't have a screen protection fingerprints get a lot of fingerprints on. You can see me it's, very reflective, Oi. How are you all in youtube? Terra, um it's got two simple controls: a scrolly wheel, which you can also click, and a button for exiting, has a toolkit rc branding on it, which we've all seen on a number of products. Now it has four ports, so you can charge up to four batteries at a time, but note the balance. Ports only support up to four s: it'll only charge up to four s; no five s, no success; okey, just four s: um there's, not much else on it, there's a bit of ventilation holes in the bottom, which it really needs because it does get kind of Warmish and on the back we've got a dc input, so you can run it off the dc power supply or for a large lipo or whatever you want to do. Just like the other toolkit charges, there's a micro, usb connector, there there's a fan and then you've got the mains connector there to run on us or other countries at 110 para 240 volts that's fine.

Now they do call this a 200 watt charger, but only if you're supplying it with your own power supply. If you're running from the mains it's only a 100 watt charge, which means 25 watts per battery, which is less than 2 amps on a 4s pack, so you're not you're, going to charge it one c, maybe a little over one see if you've got some 1300mm Packs you want to charge and it does get toasty warm um. It does have a fan, Embora, so it has some built in cooling, so really that's. It that's it in a nutshell. You get also a usb cable in the box. It doesn't have usb power out, like some of the other um toolkit chargers, que é uma vergonha. I found that usb power to be quite useful at times, so you can't charge your usb devices off this one, but everyone's got a million and one wall wall charges. You can use for that all right, so let's plug it in and look at how it works, or in this case it doesn't quite work i'm going to plug this into the mains, and i want you to listen very carefully this. As i say, it has a fan, listen very carefully to this there's, a lot of fan noise there. This fan is faulty. I think it's it's not either not mounted right or it's imbalanced or something, but it makes a horrendous noise at times which it's a cheap charger.

So maybe they just use the cheap fan. I don't know so: we've got a we've got a four cell pack here. It'S, a one thousand milliamp four cell nanotech battery let's plug it in to port one, and then the balance connector plugs in here i'm. Not that much of a fan of these type of connectors because it's easy to plug it in the wrong way. If you're, not careful, i've always taken great care to make sure i do plug it in the right way. É claro, so there we go and immediately we start getting some numbers on the screen. Some useful numbers and this this camera doesn't do very good screen. Um videoing, so i'll tell you what's here in case you can't see. It says this battery is currently at 15.74 volts and it's about 3.9 volts per cell. So you get a lot of information, that's quite handy other stuff on the screen. It'S telling us what the ac voltage is from the from the ac power supply, so it's putting 18.2 volts into this from the ac power supply once it's converted down. It tells us how much current is coming from the ac power supply. So how much has been drawn? The number of what hours that's used up the number of watts it's currently pushing into batteries and the temperature says 37 Graus, because i've been running this and they're, trying to figure out why it doesn't work anyway. We'Ll show you how it does work, so what i'm going to do here is, as so, there's two controls.

Let'S click on first of all, this first button here you see it moves this little dot around. So you select the channel that you want to activate or configure so let's go to one, and then you click the scroll wheel and you can set your battery type as with this is basically the same software and all the other toolkit charges that you can do All your battery types there you can set the cell count there or you can set it to auto it's, pretty good on auto. You can sit with your storage or charging your end voltage and you charge current so i'm just going to go down here. To this, make it go to charge there. We go one thing, i've noticed with the scroll wheel, it is sometimes quite stiff, it's, like sometimes it doesn't want to turn you when you're trying to push it. Sometimes you can accidentally click it, which is pain, the backside. It is cheap, as i say, this is a very cheap charger. Is it a good value charger i don't know, but it is certainly a cheap charger right let's go down to start and it says that just make sure you want to charge it to that voltage. sim, let's go so i set the charge current there too. I figured what i had to sit to. Is it two amps or three amps we'll, find out in a moment see the charge current gradually ramps up there and 0.

2, and you can see here also the current going out of the ac spice going up as well and the total wattage that this thing is Actually putting into the battery is increasing. Aqui vamos nós 1.2, assim 2 amps i've got it set to charge at two amps. Everything looks fine. If we screw this wheel, we can see. It should eventually start telling us what the internal resistance of the battery it takes. A little while to work that out, it's not showing anything yet, but we'll come back to that later. So this is just like all the other toolkit rc charges. Very straightforward, very simple tells us the number of milliampere hours we've put in, and that figure constantly goes up. É claro, as we charge, we've got an internal resistance, yet nothing yet. Okey, so effectively, we've got that times four, except on this one. We no longer have that times four, because port four has failed, it just failed. I was i was setting this up to do some um to the review and to stop working. Just i'll show you what i mean: let's let's, stop this charge. I have a button here: we'll go to stop one nice feature you can do you can change the current while it's charging, which is handy if you want to we'll, go to stop and i will unplug the battery from the port number one. You see the numbers, will these are quite tight. These connectors i'll plug it into port four reconnect the balance, port and we'll see all the same numbers start popping up, so it recognizes the battery.

Is there? Let me get this and, as i say, this is a bit of a pain in the backside, this setup, but i guess it is built down to a price here. We go so now. We'Re back got our voltage all the same stuff before so let's select that channel number four let's go in there. Lipo four cells charge two amps let's. Do that start? Okey, let's watch what happens? Let'S watch? What happens? Absolutely nothing it's, not charging! It will not charge, it says: it's charging says charging, but it doesn't charge this port doesn't function. It was working because i was charging a whole bunch of these. These little 650 milliamp packs the other day for my sub 250 quadrângulo. It was working fine today, it's, just not charging it doesn't work, so reliability here could be a bit of an issue: it's um, Sim, it's broken and i've only been using it a week. So i find it hard to say: Ah, Você sabe, rush out and buy this. It could be a reviewer's curse, but at some stage you've got to say no review is curse. Is it really a cursor? Is it just the fact that some products aren't made to the right standard but, as i say, this is a very cheap charger, it doesn't cost a lot of money. Então, if you're buying cheap you're not going to get bulletproof reliability, you're going to make a decision is cheap, the same as value no it's, not the same as value a charger that you buy.

That breaks in the first week it's not a good value proposition at any price. I love toolkit stuff. I don't like this. Isto é, i was getting all ready to rave about this thing because i've been using it for a week and so wonderful being able to charge four batteries, especially with the little 650s, which i can charge it at almost at 2c. Almost 2c that's fine, but when it just broken like that meh, i can't recommend this as a product. I can only review the products that are sent to me. This is what was sent to me and if it doesn't work, i can't really um sort of, dizer: Ei, Ei, go and buy it. So let's stop let's, just prove to you that this is working on the other ports, i'll plug it into port number. Three. So it's now a three port charger which okay, fair enough, you might think well, hey just use three ports, but if, if one port's broken how long before the others fail this go here, we go with the voltages, come up again, we're all good to go. Let'S go to start here. We go and you'll see the current will ramp up on this one yeah. It says start now. Aqui vamos nós 0.06.1 and up to 0.18.2 it'll get up to 2 amps eventually, and when it comes up there we go two amps that's working, fine, it's, working, fine and dandy. There'S, no problems with that.

Bem, there we go. This has already started measuring the internal resistance of the battery, so yup three ports work; fine, fourth, port it's, buggered, um yeah draw take what you wish from that. I can only show you what i'm experiencing here let's just stop that one thing to note. This is not a very good discharge, it has a storage option. If we go in here, you can see we go down to the mode. We'Ve got storage, but it's. If you have to discharge your batteries, this is not a good option. It'S, incredibly slow. The fact that i discharged several batteries the last time i used this – it was not for charging, but for discharging maybe that toasted port four i don't know but the other ports didn't toast. So i i have no idea um. What can i say and again just to remind you, let me just disconnect this battery just to remind you that when i unplug the mains power, i listen again to that fan when i plug it in where are we get the right connection? Listen Applause. That fan is just unacceptably noisy, so it's a great idea. It worked great for a week. I wish it was still working. I wish i could trust it. I wish i could rely on it because to be totally honest, i'm using the two port charger, which is really really good. I love their two port charger with a lipo in the field, and this would be great, just whack, a big success in there and charge all your little eight, fifty or six fifty packs all day long and charging four at a time so you're, never out of The air but it's only a three port charger now and the fans dickie um straight out of the box, so talk at rc, fantastic idea, um when it works it's great, but as a value proposition will there only be two ports working next week? I don't know i can only test what i'm saying that's what i've got to say about this.

Hopefully this is just a one off if you've got one of these or if you've got any other toolkit rc stuff in general how's the reliability been. I have had some people saying yeah, you know it's not as reliable as it should be. Bearing in mind this is a budget product. This is super super cheap. So do you really expect reliability? Bem, i think you should i don't care how cheap a product is. It should work as advertised it shouldn't break within weeks of buying it. So please relate your own experiences with toolkit rc into the comments section on this video i'd really like to hear them i'm. Sure plenty of other people would like to hear them because they're important, very important. We share the knowledge and there you go um as usual. Even if i get free stuff, i tell it like it is i'm, not building a lily for anybody and i'd like to thank my patreon supporters, you make it all possible because if i was survive enough affiliate links, you know i'd be i'd, be saying yeah. Don'T worry about the fourth port it's fine, but it's, not it's, terrible muriel. Lá. You go okay, thanks for watching guys, um sorry about this um different scene, this different venue. What i will do actually is. I will tear this down in another video we'll. Look at how well it's constructed and just see if that was a um, a design fault, an anomaly, a faulty component or whatever we'll see what's made it failed.

I don't want to make this video any longer than it is and it's something else for you to look forward to on rc model reviews.