Any quality chargers use the balance plug to charge?

[blueviewlaguna]

I am upgrading to the Thunder Power 1010C and 210V and was surprised to learn that it just series charges all 6 cells of my FP4900 at once through the main connections, then relies on the balancer to "burn off" the voltage through the balance connector. My small Align charger charges through the balance plugs only and brings each cell individually up to 4.2V

The TP1010C/210V setup seems surprisingly crude since the charger and the balancer are essentially fighting each other during a balanced charge, with the charger blindly charging all cells at once, and the balancer knocking them down through heat dissipation. Once problem that I can see with this is that the more the cells are out of balance during a charge, the more of the charger's output is being diverted to the balancer and the total MA reading of capacity being put back into the cell would be high since some of that went into the balancer during the charge.

Is anyone aware of a 6-10S good charger/balancer that charges through the balancing plug and just brings the cells individually up to 4.2V without the "bring them all up and knock down the high ones" approach of the 1010C/210V combo??

[Jermo]

The limiting factor is the gauge of the wire used in the balance leads. While you can easily charge smaller packs directly via the balance leads it's harder on larger packs because of the setup. Consider on your 4900mAH pack 1C is 4.9Amps. It's a high capacity pack so technically you can charge it at higher currents (say 3C for example or 39Amps). Considering each cell shares one wire they can't safely carry the load. Combine this with the fact that not all packs use the same gauge wire and ..well you get the idea. On smaller packs the Cellpro 4S from FMA works exactly the way you describe.

[blueviewlaguna]

Considering each cell shares one wire they can't safely carry the load.

Good point! - any idea what info is being communicated from the 210V to the 1010C? - it seems like imbalances over 0.12V cause the charger to limit current to 0.3 amps with 0.2V + shutting down the charging process + cell voltages, but I wonder if its a shunting process (like FMA) or just simple heat dissipation - does the 210V get hot?