My old 12v Battery Charger has decided to call it quits and I am now in the market for new charger but there is quite a lot of options these days.
Few that I have looked at so far is
OptiMATE 5 Battery Charger
CTEK (56-309) MXS 3.8
NOCO GENIUS5 6V/12V 5-Amp Smart Battery Charger (So far the front runner)
Victron Blue Smart IP65 Charger
They all are in the R1600 to R1800 range , any thoughts?
Victron Blue Smart IP65 Charger (will do lithium as well)!
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Interesting thing is the Victron does not get rated very high on the reviews. Maybe because Victron is not popular in the States?
Look here, a decent charger at a good price;
Have a look at the Meanwell chargers: PB-120N-13C - CHARGER D/T SLA O=13.8V@7.2A
Also, after Victron: https://optimate-battery-charger.co.za/
I see that Benton Chargers are also rated fairly high on the 4x4 Forum
Benton BX-1(M), BX-2, BX-4, BX-5 Multi-Stage Automatic Battery Chargers (4x4community.co.za)
Iām using the Victron Blue Smart IP65 Charger and what a pleasure.
I like that while being a very smart battery charger it can do lead and lithium batteries as well as any future batteries we donāt know about (you can set a custom charge profile for what is needed).
It also can be a power source which is nice.
I have this one too, but I didnāt pay for it so I didnāt painstakingly choose it in the manner other consumers would.
It has a Lithium charging curve and also a high curve (charges to 14.7V, probably for tubular and other flooded types) and a recondition curve for Lead Acid batteries. It does what I need it to do, which is to maintain a battery if a vehicle is not used for some period of timeā¦ eg last year this time 
I donāt know how well it compares to the CTEK. I think the CTEK is more well-known, especially in 4x4 circles, but at some point a charger is a charger is a charger. Alsoā¦ the Victron charger has bluetooth and works with VictronConnect, I donāt see that feature on the CTEK spec sheet.
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I have yet to be convinced about these fancy chargers that go though a sequence/pulsing etc.
A regular Meanwell battery charger is all you need. (https://www.mantech.co.za/Datasheets/Products/PA120_MW.pdf)
These chargers donāt have a āsequenceā: If the battery voltage is low it bulk charges (with current limit) until it reaches the charged voltage.
And so they canāt get out of step with the battery if someone disconnects it or whateverā¦
If you want to get something that will not burn your pocket, then check for the Pro User charger that Midas is selling. I got the 6amp one and canāt complain. There is loads of reviews on the 4x4 forum.
If all you want is a battery maintainer, then sure, a simple PSU set to the float voltage will do. If I read the spec sheet of that MeanWell correctly, it comes in 13.8V/27.6V/55.2V versions. Those are all lead acid float voltages.
If you have a dead battery, that simply will not do. Then you need something that will punch it up to absorption voltage. I mean, especially if you donāt have all week and all 
Other than that, I mostly agree. A lot of the fancy stuff is not essential. The charger really just needs two phases (I consider bulk and absorb as the same, it targets a single voltage): Bulk/Absorb, and then float.
Butā¦ microprocessors are so cheap nowā¦ you might as well add the smarts for free too. That has to be said too.
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https://www.4x4community.co.za/forum/showthread.php/312898-smart-charger-working-under-load
This is the dilemma one faces with these āsmartā chargersā¦
Reading that threadā¦ that doesnāt sound like the charger is very smart. The ones weāre discussing here will probably have the āotherā problem. When the AC comes back, it will go back to bulk mode (it will forget that it was in float before). Which for a load-shedding rig is what you want, but Iām sure there will be one guy out there who doesnāt want thatā¦
In that case, I can add that the Victron charger has adaptive charge, which means it times the absorption phased based on how long the bulk phase was. If the battery is quite full, it wonāt spent as much time on absorption. Which again is also good.
If the Victron charger is the same cost as the āde factoā CTEK, I canāt see a reason not to go with that. If for no reason than the very nice Bluetooth feature.
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That āBluetooth featureā ā¦ mmm ā¦ is that not the same āfeatureā one would use to adjust the battery charge algorithms from letās say like lead-acid to lithium, in the event that one replaces the lead-acid with lithiums?
My friend said I must mention that.
Note: āfeatureā as in access to the whole shebang of settings that one can tweak and adjust to the T, the TTT. 
Maybe I must go and drop this little gem in that thread ā¦ .
As a matter of fact, I recently had to recharge a 3.2v 100ah lithium cell, 2 actually, so I did this ā¦ takes like 2-3 days, but that is also good.
This charger, can recharge up to 4 x batteries:
The specs:
"Modded":
hhhhmmmmmmmm Wonder wie het daai wonderlike gedagte gegee. 
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YES!!! One idea leads to the next ā¦ as dit nie was vir daai ander charger wat jy nou gekoop het, het ek NOOIT aan die idee gedink nie nee! 
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So deel n mens gedagtes. That charger that I got works super nice. Will be topping up cells over the long weekend.