"Balance" charging LIPO batteries

[Voodoobrew]

In the old times (like Duratrax ICE era 15 years ago, maybe? ) the chargers only did the charging. You would use an external balancer that would take care of balancing your packs.

I somehow feel that the bigger brands went with this approach, as this allowed the consumer to go with higher or lower quality separate components, as per their budget.

I saw the widespread integration of the balancer in the charger itself in the era of iMax B6 & its clones.
You could only connect red and black, and go with charge only, or also connect balancing port and charge + balance the pack.

There are now slow / cheap / simple-option chargers that only charge and balance over the balance port. This is mostly for low charging currents, as the wires are pretty thin.

I understand that some of the manufacturers saw fit to move the balancer into the pack itself, like Spektrum did. I see no real rationale for that, that would benefit the savy consumer.

Indeed best choice, and most flexible one, in my opinion, would be to get an intelligent, configurable charger that has both charge ports and balance ports.

if you do a standard charge, then use an external balancer, you will end up with less charge overall. Abd some of those external balencers can take a while to work from what I have heard.