I use a bms controlled relay on one build, full charge/discharge bms on one and bms charge / no limit discharge on one build. They are all programmable/smart BMS’s
So far they all work well, after close to ten years building batteries and doing all variations my best advise is to get a smart bms that is programmable and that you can read out with your phone. I check every discharge and every charge and if the battery or bms starts having issues i’ll see it before it wrecks havoc.
I’ve had quite a few bms die and when they start acting up they can actually drive your battery into unbalance and damage it…
About that variant when BMS used only for charging:
So you keep the BMS with the battery? After discharge you check through Bluetooth the balance of cells, but the actual discharge path is not through BMS, right?
Why not use a charger with balance instead, then you can still check the battery balance after discharge and after charge ?
I am thinking for the first build to have as much logging as possible, therefore to buy voyage systems logger.
It can also log the BMS values. For this case of logging I understand - BMS inside the box is beneficiary…
If the BMS attached to the battery and it is foil-assist, it can use several batteries, each one with BMS… Probably people which have one fixed battery for EFoil , attach to it BMS, for foil-assist not…
I’ve used llt bms for the latest builds, before that ant bms but they developed issues.
Balance chargers for 12 or 14s get quite expensive, that’s the big reason for charge/balance only bms for me - it can also do balancing when not on charger if your battery needs it (normally not needed though)