The most common reasons are 1 it can charge at very high current even for large batteries and 2 it can use an external discharge bank to discharge batteries at 40 amps. This is meant to build up heat in the battery before a race to lower the IR and make it a little bit faster.

yep they get a little extra boost from the start but if you crash once, the advantage doesn't make a difference. If anything it shortens the life of your battery.

Today perhaps, but tomorrow ?
Buy a icharger, you will have it when necessary !

sort of... "yes" and sort of "no"

The Q6 is limited to 15A @ 200W

Too many iCharger's to list, but many of them offer 40A @ 1400W+ however if you are only using 2S then the max power you will need to charge 1 pack is 8.4V x 40A = 336W

Took me a while to fully grasp the benefits of an iCharger, but having 2 ports which can be synchronized together will give you the flexibility to 'cycle" your batteries so they are "conditioned". I'm over simplifying, but having spent so many years running budget packs that only last 6 months when charged at 10A, I have grown to appreciate spending a little more on a high end pack that will last 1 year being charged at 40A, not only does this save more money over the long run... instead of 30 min to charge at 10A, I'm looking at around 8 min to charge at 40A.

iCharger can potentially save you time and money compared to the Q6 if you are willing to invest in high quality batteries to maximize these benefits.

*** Does the Q6 have a data port?

Something that most iChargers offer is the ability to capture data which can be useful to generate discharge graphs, you can use this information to compare results between different brands of batteries, etc.

per PM related to this thread:

The term "battery conditioning" is kind of vague and can mean many different things. I will do my best to explain how iCharger does "battery conditioning" differently than most budget chargers. By no means am I a "charger expert" and I am not a rep for iCharger, so please forgive me if I don't fully explain everything exactly right, I am just trying to explain my understanding to the best of what I know based on personal experience

I only recently got an iCharger myself and have been going through the process of understanding some of the features that are important to me. There is a steep learning curve as iCharger is not very intuitive to operate like most other budget chargers on the market. Plan to watch some YouTube videos if you don't have a local with iCharger experience to show you the in's and out's of how to operate one.

First off, the iCharger includes an IR (internal resistance) meter with precision to the nearest tenth. There are some budget chargers on the market which include an IR meter, such as the Charsoon Antimatter (I have personally used this brand) but it is limited to the nearest whole number. I had originally thought that was "good enough" for my needs, but over time I would start to notice discrepancies and couldn't always get a reliable reading either on my IR check, or sometimes would get an oddball balance reading. As it would turn out, the problem was with faulty charge cables which the Charsoon could not detect. On the other hand, the iCharger will provide IR on the charge cable separately which can ensure that you get the max possible battery life. A bad charge cable can significantly reduce the lifespan of your packs. That's not to say that if you simply bought a quality charge cable and used it with your budget charger that wouldn't give the same results, but how will you know when that charge cable has gone bad without the ability to test it?

I thought I was pretty good with my wiring skills and built a fancy charge cable myself with all new connectors, but was shocked to learn that my IR was way higher than a Trinity charge cable that I borrowed from a friend at the track... I bought a Trinity charge cable later that same day!

Basically what you are trying to do is make sure you have the "cleanest" power going into your packs... that means having a quality power supply with fresh clean connectors so you minimize the loss of efficiency in the power supply and loss of efficiency in the charger. You can actually measure the loss of efficiency if you use a power meter like this showing the draw of the power supply:

And measure the difference in power draw from the charger with another power meter like this:
https://usa.banggood.com/G_T_Power-1...p-1005954.html

Then move the DC analyzer to the other end of the charger to where it goes into the battery so you can measure the efficiency of the charger.

What I have found is that the higher the quality of the power supply will increase the quality of the charger, and the higher the quality of the charger will increase the lifespan of your batteries, this is a measurable unit called "clean power" where the dirtier the power (higher IR) will generate excessive heat which in turn reduces the lifespan of your charge cable which also reduces the lifespan of your battery.

Second feature that is important is the ability for the iCharger to bridge 2 ports together and regulate the discharge from port 1 into a discharge bank on port 2, this is called "cycling" your pack and is a very effective way to "condition" your pack to activate the battery chemistry with as much "clean power" that you can pull and push back into the pack which in turn reduces the IR of the pack. Some people have reported problems with lower quality packs not being able to handle cycling at 40A which can severely shorten the life (of lower quality packs). In contrast, the Trinity "White Carbon" series packs are designed specifically to be cycled with this kind of abuse in mind which will maximize your power output and extend your runtime for single discharge cycle.

Third feature is the ability to "over volt" the charge cycle. Many budget chargers are limited to 4.2V but iCharger will let you increase to 4.22V and will actually go a pinch higher to maximize Amps going in... this "conditions" the pack to stay at a higher voltage after the charge cycle is finished where most budget chargers will drop the Amps too soon and the pack falls flat with a starting voltage around 8.36V where iCharger will start at a true 8.40V. I know .04V doesn't seem like much, but this voltage is compounded exponentially. Take a look at the following battery discharge graph that I created and I want you to focus on the curve for the Turnigy Ultimate 90C-4.6Ah (purple) line which is very close in spec rating to the Trinity 100C-5Ah (aqua) line. The Trinity battery was charged at 40A with the iCharger to help boost the IR, all the other packs were charged at 1C:




Note that each of the budget packs in this graph lasted about 6 months each before performance drop was detected while charging at 1C. The Trinity packs tend to last about a year while charged at 8C.
Cost for average budget 100C pack = $60 every 6 months = $120/year
Cost for high quality Trinity 100C pack = $80/year

It was a no brainer for me to make the switch to iCharger based on my needs

Another awesome benefit, from a basher/casual racer, is that you can parallel charge many packs at once. With a board like this:
https://www.readymaderc.com/products...signature-line

An iCharger 4010duo that can do 40 amps per side can charge 8 - 5000mah packs in 30 min. 4 packs on each side of the charger, using two parallel boards.

So you have 4 batteries charging at 40 amps which is about 2C if they are 5000mah packs. Each battery getting 10 amps.

Of course you can do 10 batteries per side at a lower charge rate too.

I charge all my packs while I pack up for the track, then when I get home I can stick all the discharged packs on one side of the charger together and put them at storage voltage.

The other side of the charger can be used to discharge any packs you didn't use down to storage voltage.

Have a look !

The cable is standard, not spécific !
*

All you have to do to use a standard USB correctly is hook up to a laptop that is running on battery power. Also, don't plug the charger into a power supply at the same time you have it hooked to the laptop.

Basically when you do the update the laptop and charger are connected via USB and not connected to anything else.

Perfect timing for this thread as I'm moving to electric 1/8 and only have an older Hitec X4. Thanks for taking the time to write this up.