Equaliser Advice Needed
 

Looking at the advice regarding looking after your nimh cells, an equaliser appears to be a must, but I’m confused about the choices available.

Ones I’ve short listed are, the Nosram Discharge Board & the Orion Active Discharge Device, both are around £17 and the discharge cutoff is 0.5v per cell.
Slightly more expensive is the LRP Concept 2 Battery Conditioner, which has variable discharge cutoff and is around £35.

But how do they compare against the Rayspeed Exceed Discharge Tray & Novak Smart Tray SE Discharger, both probably out of my budget at £60 & £70 respectively?

Now I’m sure the Nosram is better than nothing but is the Novak 4 times better?? Thanks

You can get novak discharger £25 to £40 2nd hand from ebay if you want stay within your budget
Up to you mate

I've been looking on there and the last one I saw went for over £50 by the time you added postage. Just wondered if the cheap ones were any good.

The cheap ones are fine as long as they have a voltage cutoff. They might take a little longer to equalise as they do so at a lower amp rate, doesn't necessarily matter unless you like to equalise FAST!

The accuracy of some of the passive boards is not that good. If you think they are all cutting off at 0.500V then they dont. I had a couple before and realised you get what you pay for.

I have had a mixture of the (ancient) Orion board, a newer Nosram board, an Integy board, the Tekin cell doctor boards and now the Smart Tray SE.

Previously, like you, I had avoided the Novak as I couldn't afford it.... or should I say, I couldn't justify it, but as soon as I started using mine I could see a difference in performance.

I had been equalising religiously on the Tekin Cell Doctor boards (which seems the best of the boards btw) & I had retired all my old boards to a box somewhere I can't remember, and even though I had the Novak board, I only had a few packs which would fit it as it is polarised... I am now at a point of having a few packs of cells which are no good, these are all the ones never done on the Novak board, and I have a few packs of cells which are still good - and these have been maintained on the Novak.

I have had to buy cells recently due to this, no choice, so I didn't get many - and the new cells are ofcause awesome, but it appears the best of my old cells aren't that bad in comparison..

So by saving a few £££'s now, could result in you needing to replace cells more often.. its false economy.. I wish id realised it sooner too.

Personally speaking I have the Robitronic board and that is accurate, each cell discharges equally, the final cutoff is actually closer to 0.8V with modern 4200s than the 0.9V advertised, still perfectly acceptable though.

Perhaps other cheap boards are not so well designed.

However the Robi board cost about £30, if you were to buy two to get the equalising done faster you are close to the same money as a Smart Tray or the new Much-More active board.

Thanks for the replies, after searching I found rcmart do the novak smart tray for around £50 and I was about to order from them anyway. I'll just have to take out another credit card! ;)