I emailed you a few links. I like the I Charger and FMA line. They both seem to work very well.

I just bought a Powerlab 6 from Progressive, whom I told I heard about from Stunthangar.  It might work, but it's hard to see how (in my opinion) from the User's Guide.  I'm used to documentation edited with a spell checker: "the male-mail servo cable", for example, but the Powerlab 6 instructions seem to have been written (in my opinion) by a person unfamiliar with electricity:

"A pack will not charge if individual cell voltages don’t equal total pack voltage."

"Running full power, it can deliver 1000W to batteries during charge. To achieve this, even on a 6 cell Li battery, it must boost the input voltage. This means the PowerLab 6 may draw up to 1200W from the input power supply."

"Per Ohm’s law, 30V x 40A = 1200W. However, it is generally not advisable to pull 100% of available power from a DC power supply. Therefore, if you want to attain 1000W of output power to a 6s Li battery, the power supply should be capable of 1300W or higher for best results."

The User's Guide tells you to configure Smart Power Management before using the charger, then gives you step-by-step instructions that (in my opinion) don't work.

I want to charge Thunder Power batteries.  My charger came with a balance connector board for Thunder Power batteries.  The User's Guide says that there are two software-selectable balance connector wiring configurations, but don't say (in my opinion) which to use with my connector board.  I guess if I fry a $125 battery, I picked the wrong one. 

Revolectrix offers free online software to do a lot of cool stuff-- maybe even configure Smart Power Management-- but I find that it costs me another $18 for the USB interface.  I am hesitant to put more money into this thing. 

I talked to another Powerlab 6 owner at the contest yesterday.  He bypassed Smart Power Management after the instructions didn't work, guessed wrong on the balance connector configuration, and finally got the charger to work, but only at a very slow charge rate. 

Revolectrix seems satisfied with the User's Guide.  The latest revision, assuming that's what's posted on their Web site, is dated 10/20/2011.

Has anyone got one of these chargers to work satisfactorily?

The TP 820 CD two port charger  is also a good choice.

  2 1/2 years  after  first released, it is  pretty well sorted out  and very intuitive .

That  may not seem like a  totally good endorsement, but TP stands behind their product line  like few  other companies.

To ease your mind on the wiring mode, you want to use the default wiring setting if you use the balance board connector that it comes with your charger to charge your TP batteries. You would only use XH mode if you use a paraboard with standard wiring configuration.

Progressive said,
"For the balance board that we included with your charger, you'll want to switch the node wiring setting to XH/EH. The only time you'd be using the FMA node wiring is if you have one of their brand of balance boards, which have the positive wire all the way at the end of the connector, leaving a gap of empty pins, rather than having the positive wire next to the rest of the wires."

I'll beep it out with my meter using their wiring diagram, which I am hesitant to trust.

I got the computer interface for the Powerlab 6.  It plugs into a three-wire connector on the charger that can be connected in either of two orientations.  What splendid design.  The aforementioned lovely documentation offers no hint that I can find of which way to plug it.  After wasting a couple of hours looking on the Web for the answer, I gave up and guessed.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that plugging it in the wrong way doesn't seem to destroy anything.  The correct way is white wire toward the center of the charger.

What do you think of the Power Lab 8 V2, better than the 6 or just unnecessary feature$?

MM

If you are looking for raw power, accuracy, ease of use the the PL8 is the one to get. I have both the PL8 and the I-Charger 306B so when I speak about them I am speaking from experience. The feature that sold me on the PL8 over the PL6 was the discharge feature. It is almost twice as fast as the PL6. If I'm discharging unused batteries after a flying session , I don't want to be there all day waiting for them to come down to storage levels. In either case you need to get yourself a very powerful 24V power supply to properly run these and take full advantage of the power that these chargers can produce. I am using re-purposed server power supplies at 24v 55 amps about 1600 watts. Instructions on how to make these are all over the net. Google can help you with that or you can get in touch with me as I still have a few left and will let them go at the current internet rates.