iFlight M4 AC Easy Lipo Balance Charger Quick Review: Ideal first Charger on a budget

The IFlight M4 AC is a low cost easy to use charger that plugs into your home power socket and makes and ideal first charger for your 2-4s lipo batteries

Like:
+Cheap
+Very easy to use
+Does the basics well
+Plenty of information on display

Don't like:
-Deans (T-plug) adaptor would have been nice to include
-4s 2.5A limit so limited use for large scale cars or quadcopters

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I ordered the ​ iFlight M4 AC 100-240V 30W 2.5A Battery Charger  from Banggood. If you use the discount code BG08761b at checkout you can get it for just $22

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I'll be keeping this review brief. In this blog post I've written about how poor the USB chargers are that come with out RC cars: In short they substantially shorten the life of your lipo battery, are slow to charge and are downright unsafe. For all of the RC car upgrades I've ever written about on this website, the battery charger is fairly consistently the paid mod I recommend first.

Click to read this blog post about why a charger is the best paid mod for your RC Car

The M4 AC is a decent budget option

Just quickly Iflight is a well known and regarded quadcopter brand so I was happy to test out this little charger. I still recommend ISDT chargers for mid-high end use but these tend to start at $50 or more for one that is capable if using a standard power point. TheIflight M4 AC as reviewed here can be bought for between $20 and $30 which makes it a great starter option. In fact unless you plan to go 1/10 scale or larger in RC cars (or 5" or larger for quadcopters) it is all you really need.

Parts needed to get up and running

Included in the box is some very simple instructions, the charger itself and a figure 8 lead, currently available in US or EU pin configuration. Living in NZ I needed the NZ/Au pin style. These are commonly available and only cost around $2 locally. The charger uses a JST balance lead connector (2s - 4s) which is common across all lipo batteries of this size. Mine uses a XT30 connector so I needed a XT30 (female) to t-plug (male) adaptor to charge my batteries. T-plug connectors are very common on RTR 1/18 - 1/12 scale RC cars

You'll want an adaptor like the $1 one on the left above

Operating instructions

Operation of this charger couldn't be easier - it only has 1 button! After you have plugged the discharge (main) connector in and the balance plug, it'll give you feedback on total battery voltage and the voltage of individual cells. After a brief delay it will automatically perform the function you are currently set to, those being:

1. Regular balance charge to 4.2v per cell (display: "4.20")
2. High volt balance charge to 4.35v per cell (display: "4.35")
3. Lipo storage charge/discharge to 3.85v per cell (display: "3.85v")
4. Li-Fe storage charge/discharge to 3.60v per cell (display: "3.60")

You can easily cycle through the above options by short pressing the single button.

You can also adjust the charge current by long pressing the button. Your options are:

1. 0.5A
2. 1.0A
3. 2.0A
4. 2.5A

In order to maximise battery life I recommend charging at 1c-2c i.e. if your battery is 1000Mah (1.0Ah) then charge at 1.0A - 2.0A.

And that is it, it's really that simple to connect and charge your batteries. You get a surprising amount of useful information from the charger as I'll explain here:

Understanding the display elements

• In the top blue box it shows what mode I'm in (Charging) and how long this operation has been running (37 seconds).
• Highlighted in orange is my charge voltage, in this case 4.20v per cell which is ideal for lipo batteries. I would recommend NEVER charging to 4.35 even with LiHV batteries as it is a gimmick that significantly reduces your battery life.
• In red is the total battery voltage (7.82V here) and below in green is the current it is presently charging or discharging at (0.91A here)
• The black text shows individual cell votages which should be close. Here my 2s battery cells are at 3.917v and 3.916v - balancing nicely.
• The green bar at the bottom shows graphically how much charge is in the battery and the % to the upper right in numerical form (66% here). To the lift of this is how much power the charger has supplied (9mah here).

Summary

In summary the Iflight M4 AC is an excellent budget charger for small scale RC cars 1/10 and smaller where batteries are 4s or less and have a capacity of about 3000mah or less. It's fair to say if you had bigger batteries for a bigger you'd be more interested in buying a larger charger like one from the excellent ISDT range. For those of us who enjoy small cars though this is an easy to use low cost model that has the perfect amount of features and does the basics really well. Should you be looking to upgrade your RTR cars USB charger (and you should) then the $20-$30 outlay on this little unit is much more palatable that the $50 plus we needed to spend on something decent in the past like the ISDT 608AC I reviewed here. Even though it is much cheaper it is still accurate and gives you all the features and information you need to keep your LiPo batteries in top condition to maximise your run time and the life of your batteries. For this reason I award this charger 4 stars - driven by the excellent value for money.

I ordered the ​ iFlight M4 AC 100-240V 30W 2.5A Battery Charger  from Banggood. If you use the discount code BG08761b at checkout you can get it for just $22

Why you can trust QuadifyRC: I've been playing with RC cars for over 30 years and have been reviewing for more than 5. Reviewing isn't my job, I just do it for fun... it's part of the hobby for me. When you buy from the links I post I may earn a small commission and this helps me cover the website hosting costs. I don't need you to buy me a coffee or join a Patreon but if you want to chat with like-minded people I have an active Facebook Group here to join (free of course)

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