00:00Here we go, this is the kind of board that makes me genuinely annoyed at myself for not buying one
00:04earlier. I'm looking at some of the best deals for fix 3.7v lipo charging with TP4057 boards,
00:11and honestly, for the price of a coffee you can bring a dead pack back to life.
00:16This first one's the bare minimum, and I love it for that. It's a mini Type-C board, about the
00:21size of a thumbnail, and here's the thing, it ships with both a TP4057 chip and a BQ25170,
00:27so you get 500mA charging on the TP4057 side and 800mA on the BQ25170 side.
00:36That BQ25170 also gives you the 4.2 and 4.35V options. It's under $2 at $1.80.
00:45If you've got a single cell lying around and you just want to test the whole charging thing before
00:49you spend real money, this is the board to buy. Cheapest way in, and it does more than the price
00:54suggests. Next up is the one I'd actually call my default pick. Same Type-C connector,
01:01but now you're getting a full 1A of charging, which is roughly double what those little 500mA
01:06boards can push. It also has the protection circuit built in, so you get overcharge,
01:11over-discharge and short-circuit cutoff, that little add-on board with the DW01 chip and the
01:16dual MOSFET. And you can select between 3.7, 4.2 and 4.35V cells. It's $3.08, and it
01:26has a perfect
01:265-star rating with over 4,500 units sold. That's not hype, that's people buying it twice.
01:33This one, at 3.42, looks almost identical to the last board, and honestly if you watched my last
01:40video you'd never tell them apart. Same 1A Type-C charging, same protection circuitry.
01:46The difference is the seller actually lists it as being made for DIY power bank builds,
01:51and a few of these come with the extra bits you need for that. The 4.8 rating over 4
01:56,500 sales
01:57tells you the build quality is solid and it doesn't do anything weird. It's the one I'd grab if your
02:02project is a power bank with a couple of 18,650s in it. Now this board, $3.51, is the
02:10most flexible
02:11of the bunch. Full 1A, Type-C, protection built-in, and the 4.2 vs. 4.35V selection is right
02:19on the
02:19board so you can flip it with a jumper instead of soldering. It also comes in the parallel variant,
02:24so if you're running two cells as a parallel pack, this is the one designed for that.
02:29It's the most expensive single board here, but it's the one with the fewest things to go wrong
02:34when you actually put it in an enclosure. Yeah, 3.51 well spent. And then there's the value play.
02:42This is 10 boards for $14.68, which works out to about $1.50 each, cheaper per board than buying
02:48a single one. You've got the 500mAh TP4057 version and the 800mAh BQ25170 version mixed in the lot,
02:57so you get both chip types to play with, and you get the Type-C connector on all of them.
03:02If you're building a couple of power banks, or you solder for a living, or you just like having
03:07spares around, this is the smart buy. 3,000 plus sold, 4.8 stars, no surprises.
03:14Two notes before you hit record, the 500mAh boards in product 1 and product 5 will feel slow for a
03:202,000
03:20to 3,000mAh cell, expect 6 plus hours, and that iron phosphate wording in those listings is just the
03:26seller's sloppy keyword stuffing, the TP4057 side still terminates at 4.2V, so don't put a true
03:32LeafAPIO 4 pack on it. Also, don't rely on the board's protection circuit as your only safety net,
03:38it protects the cell from overcharge, but it is not a smoke detector.
