If you're of the opinion that a balancer is a necessity, anyway. I still see opinions on balancing run the gamut. Battery manufacturers say you need to balance every time (usually followed by a link to buy THEIR balancer
), a lot of weekly racers I've talked to say they balance about once a month, and then there's guys that've put a year of running on their LiPo without balancing once and had no issues whatsoever.
That being said I admit I use a balancer, a TrakPower V-Balance, but I got it mostly because I had the extra $30 on me at the time and chargers with built-in balancers just didn't look good for me (DC only, monolithic menu system, additional features I'll never use, goofy stock connectors, etc. etc.). I balance every time just out of convenience; I have the thing, so I might as well use it. But I've got no problem charging a pack with just the charger.