Enova Gyrfalcon S8000/S4000 Pro Review Roundup

In summary, the Enova Gyrfalcon S4000 Pro is definitely an impressive product. As promised, it supports virtually all chemistries out of the box with full program customisation meaning that those who might want to be more “gentle” with their batteries can choose to do so, while those who simply want the maximum capacity can have it too. The ability to run a storage program to ensure Li-Ion cells are at optimal voltage for storage is certainly a big plus for those who have more cells than they might have an immediate need for.

But perhaps what impressed me most is the accuracy of the metering for a charger that isn’t a piece of high-end test equipment. Capacity accuracy when tested against an emulated battery was within 0.3% (on an individual slot basis) and averaging 0.2% (across all slots) when the reference equipment (Rohde & Schwarz NGM202) has an intrinsic error of around 0.05%. This is much more accurate than ordinary chargers which often only claim to be 1-5% accurate. The ability to set and measure current and voltages at fine granularity was another key thing that impressed – the unit meters down to 1mV/1mA with “fitted” error of <4mV/2mA as compared to a Keithley 2450 SourceMeter SMU. Being able to connect to a computer via USB with a SCPI command set allows it to be more easily configured and for automated scripted use of the charger allowing for data logging.

Of course, it’s hard to be perfect, and my S4000 Pro certainly had minor issues with the slider contacts being a bit “stiff”. Being just a two-wire contact, the contact resistance of the sliders would also contribute to error in measured energy (mWh) values. I have been informed by Enova that they have made improvements here, so I don’t expect this to be a major issue with units when they become available. The design also has a few quirks – barrel jack DC input and microUSB data connection feels a bit dated, although this isn’t exactly a dealbreaker (especially with a USB-C PD decoy board and an adapter). The fan blowing heat towards the cells also didn’t seem to be the best design choice, although the temperature rise was not entirely concerning. Charging older Ni-MH cells seemed to provoke the over-voltage error condition, so some level of tuning with settings may be necessary to avoid false terminations.

If there was any major caveat – I would say it is the fact that this is a charger best used by advanced battery enthusiasts. The user interface is necessarily complicated with multiple views and long-short button press combinations on touch buttons. Initially, it can be somewhat confusing, so reading and referring to the manual is highly recommended. While there are strong protection features (i.e. pre-charge voltage checks, limits on parameter settings) and a simplified UI option that leads you through configuring just the main parameters necessary for a given battery type, this is not a plug-and-play operation as you might find with more consumer-oriented chargers. With that in mind, it doesn’t take too many uses before the UI navigation and configuration steps become muscle memory.

Enova also seem to be quite committed to product improvements, with several firmware and definition file improvements throughout the course of the review. However, based on the performance I’ve witnessed already, I can recommend the Gyrfalcon S4000 Pro wholeheartedly to fellow battery enthusiasts looking for a more versatile battery charger and analysis solution perhaps without breaking the bank. For those who might be slightly less impressed by the fact that this charger only does 1A per channel, they also have the S8000 which has all these capabilities, expanded to 2A per channel. But perhaps the biggest praise I can give the product is simply that it is now part of my battery testing equipment line-up – you’ll soon be seeing a review or two using the S4000 Pro!

I have been using the Evova Gyrfalcon S8000 for three weeks now as my ‘main’ charger instead of the MC3000 which I had been using for the past ten years.

I have tried the S8000 with several different kinds of batteries (cells). Mostly I have been using Simple mode just as that FW runs on the charger with Firmware V64 downloaded from Enovapura. My charger came with V58 installed but downloading and installing then running V64 was very straightforward. A heavy-duty looking micro-USB cable is provided with the charger but I imagine most micro-USB cables would be fine.

Working with the charger has been great. The charger recognises liion 3.7, liion 1.5 and NiMH, which are all that I use routinely. It also recognises many others including LiFeP of which I have a few and just charged in the S8000 to check-it-out, as it were.

When they are first inserted, the S8000 runs a check on the cell and then indicates what type of cell has been inserted with N for NiMH, L for Liion and D for 1.5V liion. My use with these three has seen the S8000 recognise and terminate them correctly every time, fully charged according to specs with the termination recognised with five beeps (beeps can be turned off) and the indicator LED turning green. The only exception was a 10000mAh size D NiMH (of which only two will fit). For these large cells with that capacity, I suspect the charger-set current in simple mode is too low (around 0.1C) to get a termination every time. I had no problem getting terminations with these cells in Professional mode however, and that mode which allows you to specify virtually every parameter, I found pretty easy to set up and use even the first time around. I will mostly however be using simple mode for the bulk of my charging.

There has been some discussion here and elsewhere about how easy the S8000 is to physically use. The hardware version I have is the latest, with the longer negative terminals and while the sliders were a little stiff at first they wear in quickly especially with the addition of a bit of light oil to the sliding rails. The longer negative terminals also mean you can more easily move them to insert batteries. I had no problem with getting contact with any of the cells I use - including AAAA (quad A) NiMH which most other chargers I have used do not like. The contact seems great and has been much-improved in this latest version. There has also been discussion of the haptic-touch buttons instead of mechanical buttons: in my experience - no problems, and I even like them (or at least these ones which I thought I would not) and there is clearly less to go wrong with something that is not mechanical.

So, all up, very happy - five stars etc. I would like to be able to set the charging current in Simple-mode as you can with the (equivalent regime of the) MC3000: maybe we can have that as an option within Simple-mode in a future S8000 firmware upgrade? But you can clearly use this charger as a very simple, but effective device for every-day use, or when the inclination or need arises, as a really in-depth battery analyser that is without current peer.

Das Gyrfalcon S8000 ist ein leistungsstarkes Ladegerät für Rundzellen, das sich an professionelle Anwender richtet. Es lassen sich viele detaillierte Optionen einstellen, um den Lade- und Entladevorgang anzupassen. Und für das Laden und Entladen von Akkus funktioniert es auch wirklich gut!

Andererseits fühlt es sich noch nicht ganz fertig an. Zwar wurde die Firmware im Testzeitraum mehrfach verbessert, dennoch gibt es noch viel Raum für Verbesserungen und Erweiterungen. Hinzu kommen ein paar Probleme mit der Benutzerfreundlichkeit der Ladekontakte.

Es ist ganz offensichtlich, dass Enova bei der Entwicklung des S8000 mehr als nur einen Blick auf das SkyRC MC3000 geworfen hat. Ähnliche Form, ähnliches Menü und eine fast identische Anleitung. Dennoch fehlen einige erweiterte Funktionen, um eine wirkliche Konkurrenz für das MC3000 zu sein. Es ist eher ein „MC3000 Light“ – aber mit reichlich Potential!

Update nach einem Jahr: Es wurden kontinuierlich Erweiterungen des Funktionsumfangs vorgenommen und Fehler behoben. Der Austausch mit Enova war sehr produktiv und meine Vorschläge wurden schnell umgesetzt. Das S8000 hat mittlerweile einen festen Platz auf meinem Arbeitstisch eingenommen und ist regelmäßig im Einsatz.

• at least with firmware 3.0.38 on, but getting even better with newer firmware versions, the touchscreen buttons are a joy to use: as precise and responsive as a high-quality touchscreen (as in a smartphone) and gets rid of all the clickety-clackety unavoidable with the MC3000 mechanical keys; moreover, it’s bound to last a lot longer and there’s no mechanical parts to wear out and fail.
• Much better (larger, higher resolution and more visible) display than the one on the MC3000;
• Its IR measurements are much more precise and reliable/repeatable, and the numbers it reports are in-line with the manufacturer datasheets for the batteries and for my expectations considering each battery age and wear; In comparison, the MC3000 IR numbers were not consistent with either, and varied sometimes even depending on firmware version (so upgrading the firmware sometimes turned all your IR battery data on its head).
• Its USB interface uses a standard usb-serial chip (a CH341) which makes it much more compatible than the standard-breaking USB implementation on the MC3000 (which, among other horrors, uses Vendor|Device IDs of zero, which are not allowed by the USB standard and result in many incompatibilities, eg Virtualbox being unable to pick them up and pass on to a virtual machine – which means that us folks can’t run the SkyRC software under VB virtualization on non-Windows environments like Linux).
• It uses a standard serial ASCII (TTY-like) interface and commands and responses, and on top of it, standard VISA syntax/semantics, which is much much better than the totally proprietary and undocumented binary interface on the MC3000.
• It’s fully compatible with @HKJ’s TestController aka TC software, including slot programming, starting operations, and capturing data, which is not only multiplatform but feature-wise heads-and-shoulders above the crappy, limited and Windows-only SkyRC software.
• Has a highly responsive vendor behind it, which not only listens to the community but implements our suggestions for enhancing their products; case in point, in these 4 months I’ve been using my S8000, and sent about a dozen different suggestions to WFJ from @enova18650.com and most were implemented (sometimes in a matter of hours which is almost miraculous considering I’m about 10 timezone hours away from them), resulting in a much better product. Incomparable with SkyRC which takes literally years between firmware releases and has simply ignored all the complaints and bug reports I sent their way.
• Didn’t need any spare parts for my S8000 yet, but when my MC3000 display stopped working, it was a real struggle to get a spare one from SkyRC: they simply wouldn’t respond, had to involve the seller I bought it from and wait months to have it shipped to me and at great expense as it first had to be shipped to the seller and then to me. I’m pretty sure given my experience with Enova so far, and what I’ve read from the experience of others, that it would be much simpler to get spare parts and support from them if I ever need it.

The Gyrfalcon S8000 Battery Charger and Analyzer is pretty good!

The user interface is mostly intuitive. I personally prefer mechanical buttons that click instead of capacitive touch sensors because they can be faster to use.

The S8000 appears to be designed for advanced users. You really need to configure each channel and think about what you are doing. You can’t just chuck a battery in and expect the charger to ask you what you want to do or default to a program that is appropriate for that battery type.

I was a bit surprised that the battery type is not automatically detected. I put a Ni-MH battery into the first channel and it defaulted to a Li-ion Charge program. Enova has since added a safeguard to the firmware to warn the user and ask them to confirm before proceeding.

I would love to see temperature sensors added to each channel so that the cell temperature can be monitored.

I asume that thhe heatsinks and fans help keep the charger cool. I may need to invest in a thermal camera to find out!

I like how the backlight for the display automatically turns off.

It would be even better if the positive terminals had longer notches to allow cells with recessed tops to fit.