Help choosing charger
 

Going to buy a new charger. My needs are basic. 2S & 3S batteries for crawlers, receiver packs and glow plug ignitors for Nitro. I do have 1, 4S I use for a starter box. Dual charging would be nice but not an absolute must. Right now I'm looking at these 2 below. I definitely want to keep budget at $150 MAX.
Recommend 1 over the other? Other ideas? I'm a little partial to Hitec as their headquarters are 45 minutes away from me if I ever need service.

https://www.amainhobbies.com/protek-...k-8523/p696354
https://www.amainhobbies.com/hitec-x...c44270/p696435

The Protec does ony 50 watt per channel, with 4S you wll charge with only 3A

The Hitek dos 100 per channel so you can charge 4S with 6A but.....

If you want to use full capacity of that charger you need to use an external DC power supply. And wgwn looking arround for an AC/DC charger you will see more like those limited specs when using it on AC.

But there are some large recent topics about chargers, look them up!

Both those charges sucks. The protek only has 50 watts. Charging a 4s lipo with 50 watts is crazy slow. The hitec is the better option but it still only has 100 watts of power on ac mode.

With a budget of $150 I would get an icharger x6 and a cheeped $40-50 12volt power supply on eBay. This setup will cost your about $150 and you can charge at 30 amps.

I had the non-black edition of that Hitec charger. It was fine for what it was, and doing 2S~3S packs. Once I dug deeper into newer chargers out there, and looking at specs closer, I choose a Hota charger. It was leaps and bounds better than my Hitec charger at finishing up the end of a balance charge. The Hota has a balance current of 1600mA where the Hitec and Protek are only 300mA~400mA per cell. I got a DC only version of the Hota charger, 'cause I already had a seperate power supply. If wanting an AC/DC two port charger, then I'd highly recommend taking a good look at newer generation of chargers like Hota, and ISDT. The D6 Plus would be my top pick for the price point you're after in a dual channel charger... https://www.smc-racing.com/Chargers?product_id=541

Nice. I think I will go with this Hota. I guess being a casual RC guy, I just look on the big sites for equipment. Never heard of SMC.

ll chargers does the same thing. All depend on mah's you re pushing. all on you! only differance is cosmetically. How the box looks. I use 2 Ultra Power UP 120AC & Up240AC. One 12amp, the other 24amps. My cars run 6K lipos, I can charge 4 lipos at one time useing both ports in parallel. 240 charger can use for cars also, but used for my Airplanes & Jets. 24amps. I still havent used them to the max, but it does what I wanted them to do after 4yrs. UP120AC you cant get one on Amazon at $120, The UP240AC can find them $180-220. It depends on your need.

Is the main difference in SPEED of charging? If quickly charging batteries is not a concern for me, should I bother with a nicer setup? Do better charger keep batteries in more stable and usable condition?

It is not just speed- but that is the easiest one to notice. The balance accuracy, adjustability, ability to save and name charge profiles, ability to export charge settings to a micro SD, ability to calibrate the charge voltage, adjustable balance threshold, battery recovery settings, regular firmware updates, reasonably high balance/discharge power, availability of warrant or parts if needed, being able to discharge to a discharge bank or external battery. These are some of the features of the iCharger X6 that I appreciate.

The nice thing about using an external power supply is that the power supply will outlast the charger in most cases, and even if you buy and AC/DC charger, having a good DC power supply will usually let your charger operate at higher power (for faster speed, or charging multiple batteries).

I always thought this was a good idea.

Look at this on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/114141572241

I recommend you to use an external device for this, but I mean, just for security.

Check out the HTRC T400. I just got one last week and I love it. The touch screen interface makes it so quick. It has a built-in 200 W power supply, and if you already have a high power DC power supply, it can charge at up to 400 W.

There are no YouTube reviews on it yet, but it is just a more powerful version of the T240:
The touch screen might seem like fluff, but it's only about $15 more than the standard version and it just makes navigation much faster.

$132 on Amazon.

This is one I got love it
https://www.smc-racing.com/Chargers?product_id=541

I ended up going with the Protek Prodigy 625. Way more $ than I wanted to spend but my wife must have been in a good mood and told me to spend more. I really don't understand power supply technicalities and needed a charger by the weekend.
The bells and whistles are a lot to take in as my experience has only been with the cheapest of chargers. I'm very glad I can look at cell info now and somewhat have a grasp on storage charging. The instructions that came with it are really informative but hopefully I can figure out exactly what I CAN do with this.