Hornady Auto Charge Pro vs RCBS Chargemaster Lite (part 1)

okay everybody um good to be with you again uh i have been waiting on this particular powder measure to come out pretty much the entire year of 2020 up to this point today is august the first and um i finally got it in the mail i got it from brownells i always like dealing with them and this is the new hornady auto charge pro and so i'm going to be doing a comparison video against the rcbs charge master light which you saw in my previous powder dispenser um head to head video i compared the charge master light up against the frankfurt arsenal intelli dropper and you can see which one i still have so you know i just prefer the rcbs light right right now so but i've really been interested in this hornady ever since it came out and you know what's funny is you would think with this uh modern design let me see if i can move the camera back a little bit you can kind of you know it's sort of like a stack design um the screen is over the scales and you would think i was sort of expecting this thing to be considerably smaller uh when i got it in and i was kind of surprised that it's really no smaller than my charge master light to be honest so i mean both the scales are pushed up against the wall as far as i can get them and they both stick out from the wall maybe a little over somewhere in the ballpark of like 10 and a half inches the hornady might be just a tick last like maybe a half inch but it's amazing how small the charge master is still the charge master like compared to that charge master is about five inches wide the hornady is also about five inches wide it might be a little a little less like four and maybe seven eight something like that um and the height is pretty much exactly the same they both drain powder pretty much the same way there's just a valve on the side like you can see on the charge master light so really nothing to talk about there as far as comparing goes um okay let's show you um kind of how the scales calibrate here um what you do to calibrate it is you take the pan off the scale obviously and these are pretty nice pans that hornady sends out i sort of wish the handles were bigger but i prefer a pan with a little longer handle so anyway what you do to zero is you press and hold down the zero calibrate button and it's gonna flash 10 and what it wants is this 10 gram check way so i'm going to try to put it right on the center of the platform and that means it's good to go on the 10. when you take the 10 off let's go sit over here it's going to ask for 50 and it'll flash 50 so then you set the 50 on there and you wait for it to say 50 and when it does that you take the 50 gram weight off and it lets you know that it passed and that is that so um calibrating the charge master light since this is a comparison video what you do there is you hit the calibrate button it's going to say zero you wait for it to stay stable which it has ever since i hit calibrate um then you hit the cal button again it's going to ask for a 50 gram weight so you set that on there then you after it says stable you calibrate again it's going to ask for 100 grams total so you take your other 50 gram weight then you hit you wait for stable hit gal and there it is they read 100 grams and it always does kind of impress me with the charge master light that even though one of those 50 gram check weights is way off to one side of the platform it still only reads 50. so anyway both have been calibrated they're good to go this is the factory pan that comes with the charge master light um as far as the covers go they both have very similar covers they both can be set on the scales and cover the the scales with the powder pans on the scale so that's pretty cool and they're just removable and this is what i prefer personally so there is that in calibration okay now let's um get into dispensing some powder the powder i'm going to be using today is the imr 48 95 this is the same stuff that i used in my other comparison video so i'm going to try to keep all this the same as much as possible that way if you sort of want to compare the hornady up against the frankfurt arsenal my test should be really similar and you ought to be able to kind of transfer the data from one or the other if you're not familiar with imr 4895 it is a small extruded powder the grains are i mean the kernels of powder are pretty small it's really similar in size to like say vargat or h-4895 it's so it's it's pretty good metering stuff especially in in this type of thing so all right let's dispense the charge um the hornady it comes with a you can change the speed settings and it has four you can see right here i'm on setting one you can change the two setting three setting four and then normal the settings one through four allow you to customize the speed and the time and i actually i think you might actually be able to do it on normal too but when you restart the scale like turn it off and back on i think it goes back to some sort of factory default so anyway you hit the zero calibrate button to zero out the pan i'll see i need to do that here too on the charge master so it took me a little bit of getting used to this touch pad because it's uh like you can see right here if you hit if you try to punch in a charge like you would on the charge master lot it it won't let you do it you actually have to come up here and hit the target and then that starts flashing and then you can hit like we're going to be dispensing 44 grains and it always includes a decimal point so you d you don't you never have to push a decimal you just hit four four zero and then you hit enter you gotta remember to hit enter and um so there's that set and then after you get that dialed in there you just hit dispense and the the auto charge pro is super quiet i mean like it is the quietest powder dispenser that i've tried thus far and i've tried a charge master the older charge master 1500 the charge master lot the frankfurt intel dropper the lyman gen 6 however i didn't make a video on that one when i was playing with it and also this one and this one is like in a league of its own when it comes to noise charge master lights not bad but this one is definitely very quiet okay if you notice it does not read the weight of the scale after it reaches the target charge way it always has this round count feature and you can see i'm on round count eight now that's cause i've been playing with it before i started the video and i hate this feature on all powder dispensers personally it's like i don't know why the manufacturers think you need this i mean you have a loading tray out in front of you you've got cases in the tray i mean it's it's easy to keep up with how many cases you've charged and i always think this is the most useless feature ever i've never found a need for it in all the reloading that i've done anyway the reason i want to point that out is because it won't go away the only way you can get it to to go back to the way is if you like lift up on the pan a little bit and set it back down so there's that um and here's something else that i that kind of concerns me about this let's see i need to take the cover off the back of this thing and go ahead and take the charge master off too so dump that back in there you know what let's go ahead and time a charge while it's on the on the regular um setting here so i'm gonna i think it's on auto yeah it is so about 23 or 4 seconds is is how long it took took it to dispense 44 grains now i want to show you something this is what really bothers me about this this feature here watch what happens let's say you're seating bullets while you're throwing power charges and you bump the table and there's a little bit of powder at the end of the dispenser tube and it trickles into the into the pan you would think it would alert you that it's got to overcharge or something but watch this i'm gonna throw one kernel two kernels three that one didn't go in there we go three four kind of sticking for some reason five six right there's two so seven eight nine ten 11 12 notice nothing changed here no indicator that you've got a an overcharge or anything sitting there ready to go so i'm gonna lift up on the pan and look at that 44.3 is three tenths over from what its target weight was and there's no indicator anywhere on here that you have added powder to the pan so that's one thing that i don't like very much about this um so anyway let's and here i've noticed there's no cancel button or anything like i'm used to seeing on the charge master lot i finally figured out that the dispense button is sort of like the cancel button you hit that and it'll it'll quit going so right now let's go ahead and compare the two head to head so i'm gonna try to start them at the same time so the charge master lot finished at about 21 seconds and this one finished at about 25 the auto charge so let's do that let's do that again and as far as i know the auto charge stayed on his powder yep so there we go i had to move the pan to get it to do that let's throw one or two more just to have kind of a baseline comparison here i have them both set on auto right now so and there's about the same amount of powder in each dispenser there's way more than enough powder than it takes to cover the dispenser tubes about 23 seconds on the autocharge pro and 30 or so on the charge master light okay now let's do something that the charge master can't do i played around with the settings on the auto charge here a little bit so i'm gonna hit settings and i'm gonna go to setting one i've changed the speed and changed the trickle time the speed is the speed that it trickles the time is how far away it is from the target charge when it starts trickling so right now it should start trickling at about four tenths of a grain shy of your target weight which is 44 grains so i might have to i might have to hit dispense on the on the hornady here so let's see yep so 25 seconds for the auto charge and about 35 for the charge master so let's try that one more time sorry i got a little lazy with my timer there okay as you can see that time it ran until it got point eight grains only two tenths away from his target that was only 17 or 18 seconds there so that's pretty good and as far as i know it yeah it held held its 44 grains both scales have a about 34 seconds on the charge master light there both scales have a little built-in bubble level but what's funny on the hornady where the display hangs over the scale part so much it's really kind of hard to look straight down on the little bubble level that is built in on the scale so okay now there's also another speed setting on the hornady here in the owner's manual it tells you that there is a overall speed setting a low medium and high like for the whole for the scale as a whole the way you figure out what you are own is if you press and hold the number 8 key it will tell you which setting your scale is on so let's do that i'm going to press and hold the 8 key and it says m for medium now if you want to change that you press and hold the enter and the a key so let's let's do that all right now it went to high so i've never tried this yet so let's see what kind of difference it makes if the scale as a whole is set on high now i could hear a little bit of a difference in the speed on the hornady that time all right says that was only like 17 or so seconds so i mean it's dispensing pretty quick let's see if it threw over the only way i know to tell is the lift up nope so far so good and about 30 seconds on the charge master light so let's see let's increase the the speed here to 4 enter and we'll leave that where it's at because i think it's pretty close so let's try it again with the scale as a whole set on the high speed and with a little bit of a slot sorry when you make sometimes when you make a change like that on the auto charge you have to hit dispense again to get it to start in its um you know it's auto cycle so i forget about that and it also stopped extremely short of its target charge where it started trickling that was about 26 or so seconds on the charge master but i think what happened on the horn dude that time was i didn't have the scales or the pan sitting centered in the little platform there so let's let's give that a i'll take the blame for that one let's try it again i'll make sure it can be a little tricky trying to set these scales down um all right let's see if this makes a difference and when i'm filming this video i'm trying not to let my breath um while i'm talking go over on the scales oh yeah that made a big difference look at that only stopped lord that was like 13 seconds maybe and let's see if it went over so far so good now there's no settings at all on the charge master light for speed whatsoever what you get out of the box is what you got they're 36 or so seconds on the charge master light that time so anyway that kind of gives you an idea of you know what you can do with the different speed settings on the hornady so let's get into some accuracy testing up against my beam scale okay so i got my camera repositioned here a little bit what i have here is my little chromebook hooked into a webcam that is pointed at my beam scales down there with the light shining on it so the lighting is good and i have 44 grains of check weights in the pan right now those are the little lyman check weights uh and as you can see the scale is zeroed pretty dang good right there i'll zoom in i mean that's pretty much dead on now i want to show you the sensitivity of these beam scales i don't know if all of them are as sensitive as this set that i have but i mean i'm pretty pretty impressed with this so right here i'm gonna i'm gonna grab one kernel of h of a hodgston i mean imr 48.95 sorry so this is just one kernel now let me zoom in switch hands here i'm going to zoom in on the on the screen there here is my one kernel of powder going i want to drop this in the pan and you watch the scales move i'm gonna drop in i dropped it okay here we go dropping in three two one that's one kernel of powder so now i'm gonna take that kernel back out so i'm gonna i got the pan out i'll try to get some of this in the picture here if you can actually even see it right there is that oh it ran away from me there's that kernel of powder right there the one kernel that i dropped in i'm gonna put that back in my bowl now let's set my check weights back on the scale and see what it reads i mean that is pretty dang close to where it was before and i know i really have to be conscious of my breath around this thing because it really will mess with it so anyway that's that's my scales that's how repeatable that i feel like these rcbs m 500 scales are so i've done a few little modifications to it like i've got those pipe cleaners under and over the beam to kind of limit the amount of travel and so the beam can't slam down whenever you take the pan off but other than that you know it's just the stocks get a set of scales i've not sent them off and had them accurized or or whatever so here's what we're going to do i am going to put these 44 um grain check weights on these on the two scales because i had some people ask for that in the in my other videos so let's let's do that just to just to show um turn this the manual there we go okay so right there is my my check weights going the 40 44 grain so let's see how it reads it all right the horn horny thinks it's 44.2 for whatever reason so let me check that again just to make sure now it says 44.1 all right let's see what the rcbs says all right it says dead on 44. so let's check the hornady one more time 44.2 so um so when the hornady throws 44 grains it's actually going to be throwing a little bit less according to these check weights and according to this set of scales so we'll take that into consideration when we uh when we start comparing the accuracy here okay i think i've got everything in the picture pretty decent right now so let's do some accuracy testing here so i'm going to take my 44 grains of check weights out of the pan over here and let's have the my i want to zero that again just be on the safe side all right let's have it dispense 44 grains and we will see about how many kernels of light it is on the beam scale i'll try to zoom in just a little bit more there all right says it's good to go better get my powder pan back over here in the in the beam scale so here we go i'm going to take this charge from the here here it was from the um from the hornady i'll pour it into the pour it into the bean scale pan set it back on the hornady all right and there it is try to get that sharp a little bit sharp so let's add some kernels of powder here i don't know how much we'll try to zoom back out here so maybe you can see what i'm doing a little bit um so there's one well it'll fall in two three that's that's pretty dang close so it looked like it was only about three kernels white that time so not too bad let's let's have it let's check the charge master now compare it up against the dang it 44. all right there we go when you one thing i've noticed with the charge master is when you're looking at it at like a real funky angle and you're trying to hit one of the buttons lots of times you i guess your finger is not quite in the right place and it'll hit another button like it took me forever to hit 44 there i kept i kept hitting 41 for whatever reason so anyway i think that's just user error and me trying to work around the camera and the tripod okay um let's see the charge master says it's ready to go there at 44 grains so i'll try to get as much stuff in back in the picture as possible here that looks pretty close okay got the there's all of it i'll set that back over there and let the charge master start throwing another one you go ahead and have the quantity set to throw okay so here we are it's looking like it's kind of in the same ballpark as what the hornady was that last time so there's one two i think it needs another one yeah three that's pretty pretty dang close let me make sure yeah you should be able to see that pretty good yep i have three kernels light on the charge master so dump that back over there in the charge master spot so now the autocharge pro has another charge dispensed right so here's one kernel going in two three four it needed about i think four would get it there if i was loading my ammo for my f-class gun that i shoot a thousand yards with my 308 i would have called that plenty good enough right there here's the charge master going in that time the charge master is dead on the money and just again just to kind of brag on the rcbs scales what i'm going to do right here is i'm going to take one kernel out of this so right there i don't know if you can can see or not but i have only one kernel one kernel only i'm gonna put that back in this other bowl now let's see if it reads just a little bit light because that one was dead on the money look at that it's pretty much at the top of the line it reflected taking that one kernel of powder out let me see if i can zoom in here a little bit nope i can't zoom in and keep that in the frame anyway hopefully on the screen you're watching will be big enough to see that but sure enough the uh the line uh it is it is showing it's it's visually you know apparent there that the scale is reading lighter than it was before i took the kernel out so there we know the scales are are doing their job for sure all right let's go that was from the charge master so let's do another one from the auto charge pro there it is all right it's a little on the light side this time so one two two is pretty clo i think it could take three yeah three is going to be it so three kernels light again i think so far every time it's only been three kernels like so that's it's being very consistent for sure i'm liking that and i'm liking how fast i'm locking how consistent it is along with how fast it is i really wish you could get rid of this round count thing that just annoys the snot out of me not knowing that you know not having the assurance that i've not jarred the table and accidentally knocked a few kernels of powder in the pan that might have been sitting right on the edge of the of the dispenser cube or something that drives me crazy i have no idea what hornady was thinking with that um so i bet i could rant this is the charge master going in here but let me tell you i could i could rant for an hour on how much i hate round count features on powder dispensers okay the charge master it is looking like it might only be one kernel light so right here is one kernel going in it's going to be awful close we're probably down to splitting kernels at this point yeah that pretty much got it one kernel so not bad it's been my experience that the charge master lie is a pretty decent little scale that's the other thing we've not talked about thus far is price lots of times you can find the charge master light on sale for around 200 bucks i think on a daily basis it might sell for around 250 or or so um but i think midway currently right now as of august the 1st 2020 has them on sale for 200 bucks i think so now the hornady on the other hand because it's the latest greatest newest thing you know it's you're gonna you're not gonna find too big of a deal on it uh going price on it's about 330. um i got this one from brownells i had like a 15 um dollar off coupon or something so i wound up getting it for like right around 3 15. okay here we go again it's looking like it's back into the three kernel light range so there's one two and three that's really close again i think we're kind of getting into splitting kernels now it's definitely not one whole kernel light so i'd call that good so again the hornady has been extremely consistent as far as being being that um in the three kernel range here's the charge master light going in okay that time it threw heavy um i'd say that's probably two kernels heavy so let me take one out uh yes that's only one let me set it down gentle yep that was only one kernel of powder coming out so we're going i still think another one needs to come out yup definitely so let's take one more out yep there's that one and oh you know another one my could come out there it is i took three out so far i think that'll get it yep pretty much that that's that's got it awful close there move my webcam a little bit the focus is going a little weird on it there we go that's better yeah that's good there that's again you're kind of you're kind of down to splitting kernels at that point you'd have to have a half a kernel to to make that go dead on zero so that was from the the charge master so that was the first one that it kind of threw a little on the heavy side let's do one more from the hornady okay the hornady's coming up light every time here's one let's go ahead and give it its three two oh look at that it finally threw one over three notice the overcharge now uh you know what i don't think that last kernel went in i think i heard it hit i think it stuck to my tweezers okay there we go y'all will know for sure but i'm pretty sure i thought i heard uh when i pulled the tweezers back i thought i heard it hit the table the kernel about her anyway that's three three kernels added to it again and i am i could stand four let's let's put a fourth one in there yeah that's what it needed okay anyway now when it throws over while it's throwing it let you know so let's see just how much over it through you gotta lift the pan up and well heck i don't know no it won't um i'm glad it did that so at least y'all can see what happens um doesn't matter what i do there if i lift the pan up or whatever it just it just says no go it's over so heck i guess i have to hit dispense um okay i've not run into this yet so y'all are seeing this in real time um gosh i don't know what to do i don't know it's just completely locked up there doesn't doesn't agree to it set over and maybe it's game over let me hit i don't know um ah there i hit enter all right did it so who knows this stuff might be in the instructions i've not um i've not read them that thoroughly yet but and it might also be because i left the speed on high um you know what we might try a couple that way i think i've been talking so much i forgot what charge that was i think that was from the from the hornady so let's uh let's do that that one's on 44. let's do the inner and eight now it's on low all right let's try it on low i've not seen it run there yet so i'll just dump this one back in the hornady let's see what it and i'll probably have to hit no didn't have to that time so this is the slower overall speed still haven't been i haven't played too much more with with that all right 44 grains you know what let's time it we haven't done that in a little bit either so here's the timer going let's see how long it how long it takes it to dispense a charge on the overall low speed 27 seconds ish okay anyway so over here is the charge that we just threw on the low speed and it's coming up even wider this time i think so one two three four oh come on go in there there we go five and six yeah that might have been yeah it's pretty much dead on six okay let's try one more and it's still coming up light again so looks like it might be back closer to its uh three kernel light um you know rhythm yep it was three kernels like so there's that let's do one more from the rcbs i might feel like i'm not giving or it might sound like i'm not giving the rcbs as much attention or love but that's because i've had it a really long time and i've also done another comparison vd video on that one up against the intel dropper but right there you go look at that i mean that's so close on the on the charge master that again i think you're within a half a kernel now like that so there's that now one thing that um let's see i'm gonna try to turn this on manual um one thing that i have not talked about with the hornady is let's say you're wanting to use your scales what much like i do for weighing brass or bullets or whatever um because the display hangs over the um the autocharge pro so much it will limit you to how big of a case that you could weigh now what i have right here is a 300 win mag now it has let's see i've got this on manual i think so i'm gonna zero it yeah nothing's gonna start dispensing so it does have enough clearance to easily weigh a 300 win mag and i'm going to try to shed some of this light over there actually maybe i should just turn that off it might help the lighting out a little bit there we go um anyway there is plenty of light why lord plenty of clearance there for a 300 win mag um that's about the tallest thing i think i've got sitting around in here right now i do have see this is a this is a 300 i'm sort of like a collector of all cartridges this is a 300 remington ultra magnum um let's see if i can get it to get the camera to focus come on focus there we go yeah 300 um rum or remington ultra magnum now unfortunately i have a this is a a dead round but i have a bullet stuck in there which is going to keep it for sure from being able to go on to the scale but this the the hornady would have no problem at all weighing 300 uh remington ultra magnum brake uh brass too it's plenty tall enough for that i would think it's probably tall enough for 338 lapua um let me check here i don't know exactly what the case length is on that but i can come i can look it up here in my reloading manual really fast uh here we go in the in the hornady book for 338 lapua um dang it we've i'm still having focusing issues there aren't yeah there we go that's better uh you'll just have to take my word for it uh case maximum case length is 2.724 okay let's see what it is on a 2.724 is what we said for 2.724 let me get over here into the [Applause] it's an ultra magnum there it is uh oh heck it's actually longer uh remington 300 remington ultra magnums uh maximum length length is 2.850 so yeah the definitely no problem at all weighing uh 338 lapu on this thing uh definitely not going to weigh 50 bmg though because i have one of those and it ain't even close so anyway that's one other thing to consider um but it sounds like it's not going to be too big of a problem with the hornady um even though you do have so much you kind of have like a ceiling there that you're going to work with so anyway hope you enjoyed the video i've really been looking forward to getting one of these things and playing with it so i don't know it might be a keeper so we'll have to see thanks for watching and um subscribe to my channel i'm going to try to do a few more videos like this and i always enjoy reviewing new gear and and just exchanging ideas i always sort of feel like i go to youtube for a lot of information and ideas and stuff so i sort of feel like i want to give back a little bit and so again thanks for watching and until next time

Channel: Strickly Reloading

Views: 17,194

Keywords: Hornady Auto Charge Pro vs, RCBS Chargemaster Lite vs, Hornady vs RCBS, powder dispenser comparison

Id: inkSvW8wL2Q

Length: 45min 40sec (2740 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020