Maxamps?
07-12-2011, 07:13 AM
#16
Not only overpriced, but over rated. Literally. There is nothing better about them than any other battery at 1/3 the price. Nothing.
Those that disagree are either sponsored by them, or have already invested thier hard earned dollars in them and can't admit they wasted their money.
Those that disagree are either sponsored by them, or have already invested thier hard earned dollars in them and can't admit they wasted their money.
07-12-2011, 12:48 PM
#17
Either way, these threads are getting old......
So out of curiosity, what happens if maxamps shuts their doors? Are you guys proud? Do you think it is cool?
Do you look big picture and think about race events and prizes that other manufacturers are probably thinking about pulling? This is a racers forum for the most part and the question becomes, better off sponsoring a race or spending on a mag ad?
07-12-2011, 12:59 PM
#18
I'm all for a U.S. company to keep producing quality products for us RC'ers. I will support any company that produces a quality product at a fair price. Unfortunatly, MaxAmps fails the smell test on both counts. Once you add in the over-inflation of the statistics and capabilities of their packs, you have complete failure. I'll throw SMC under the same bus while I'm at it. $25 foreign packs are the way to go. And even if they do fail, I can get 4 or 5 for the price of 1 SMC or MaxAmps pack.
Scarab
Scarab
07-12-2011, 01:13 PM
#21
Just be glad you have choices. I have used maxamps and many other brands.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
07-12-2011, 02:52 PM
#22
Just be glad you have choices. I have used maxamps and many other brands.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
well yes true if you dont like the batterys than dont buy them, but doesnt all the lipos come from the same factory pretty much ?
thats what i dont get with packs that $100 +, now they do have better wireing and a good connecter you can use and maybe better consumer service but do they actually perform better than way cheaper lipos ?
07-12-2011, 02:55 PM
#23
I'm all for a U.S. company to keep producing quality products for us RC'ers. I will support any company that produces a quality product at a fair price. Unfortunatly, MaxAmps fails the smell test on both counts. Once you add in the over-inflation of the statistics and capabilities of their packs, you have complete failure. I'll throw SMC under the same bus while I'm at it. $25 foreign packs are the way to go. And even if they do fail, I can get 4 or 5 for the price of 1 SMC or MaxAmps pack.
Scarab
Scarab
i can agree with that.
i mean theres the video on here that prove it with the testing.
07-12-2011, 06:30 PM
#24
Just be glad you have choices. I have used maxamps and many other brands.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
The only problem w/ the MA business plan (iMO) is they loose far to many seasoned racers and even many long time hobbyists... prices are VERY high for folks that don't need support (hand holding) and even that would get over looked by MOST if they simply had the best lipo's available on the market. Sadly as others noted you can get packs as good or better for 1/2 the price. I hope they stay in business and have continued success, there is a place for them.. just not w/ me
PS they would fall apart if they didn't sponcer racers, races and stay in magazines both.. they feed off each other. A ad w/o racers or anyone backing will get limited traction, this is a big piece and don't forget big races and events draw in new racers who will be buying the brand names they see at these events.. lots of pictures taken at the events for online and magazines and with the banners and support MA gives they get lots of free advertising as well as what they paid for w/ mentions etc during the events. Wouldn't be wise to back out of this iMO. Just my2c though.
07-12-2011, 07:13 PM
#25
If they close? They close.... Survival of the fittest... If they don't change their bussiness style soon they just may have to close! Last time I checked the job of a bussiness is to supply a product that the customers are willing to buy. Produce a product nobody wants? Then nobody will buy it....
But thats just common sence I thought!
07-12-2011, 07:28 PM
#26
OK, I am watching the "official video" of Jang. From what I understand, he is a guy that does some conversion kits and has his own site. Impressive, but I question his electrical engineering skills.
At approximately 3 minutes, he states that he uses a 30 amp lightbulb discharger for testing. For layman, basically it is a row of car parking lights that in parallel add up to 30 amps of current. They used to be used to discharge sub c cells back in the day because 30 amps was a lot of pull back then.
As a side note, people also use configurations like these to discharge batteries in older cordless drills, etc... that use nicad batteries, not lipo.
He is going out on a limb, but being reasonable about the "average draw" that a 2wd vehicle pulls, but there are way too many variables to truly dumb this down as he has. You have to take into account gearing or incorrect gearing, track conditions, and especially driver throttle/brake control. Back in the day, everyone was limited to about 40 amps draw max and with most 1/10 rtr stuff he is correct. However today we have castle and tekin and viper and novak brushless systems that pull way more current than that during full throttle or braking.
For example, in a 5 minute heat, I generally use almost 1000 mah less than the local fast guys I compete against consistently. Therefore if I was running a zippy and one of the other guys was running a maxamps and we were going pretty much the same laps, etc.... everyone would assume the zippy was better because I try to be smooth in my driving style, etc... but in reality that is not necessarily accurate.
At 3:39, he completely proves he has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to c ratings. If you put a consistant 30 amp draw on any sort of battery on earth, it will show exactly that...30 amps of current draw. It is impossible for him to be able to get any other reading.... The ONLY possible way he could get any variance in his testing is if he is having a connection issue during a test (V=IR) good or bad and if he was using alligator clips, etc.... that would be the variances he was experiencing and quite possibly he could be seeing different voltage pulls if the bulbs pull more or less power when hot compared to cold. Once again, technically that would be a form of connection issue in the world of Ohm's law.
NOW just in case, what should happen is with stated MAH, the maxamps battery should have lasted longer than the 5000 packs and he is 100% correct at the 4 minutes area when hypothesizing about that. Everyone does have a valid complaint here. So was the battery mislabeled? Is it a 5000 with a sheet of lead at the bottom to appear bigger?
Back to c ratings, what he should have done with what he had was to test with 2 dischargers to jump it up to 60 amps as a comparison. Then he could see if there would be issues with the wires on the packs, if they could allow more release, etc..... and in a perfect world, if he was able to test the lumen output on the lights or at the bare minumum used his volt/ohm meter on the current draw setting in series during the test, he could then report how much output amps the packs were actually doing during the test.
Change of subject to maxamps.
Personally I HATE the fact that they are doing this "true c" rating as the consumer is not educated enough for them to pull this off. (THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT CRITICISM OF CONSUMER)
The only comparison I can think of is car stereo amplifiers with a rms rating and a ils rating. Many companies such as Rockford, Orion, Phoenix Gold, etc... rated their amps at rms ratings and many companies such as Pyramid, Jensen, Sony, etc.... rated at ils ratings. So you would see this amp for $100 that said 1000 WATTS! on the heatsink and all over the box, then you would see this 50 to 100 watt amp priced at $500.... Then of course, there was the variable of 12.8 volts or 14.3 volts to determine wattage ratings which confused the consumer even more.....but that is completely off topic...(sorry)
What maxamps is doing is they are saying that for short bursts, their battery can send out 150c IF an esc/motor is trying to pull it and they are probably correct in saying it can handle that. But once again, it is only relevant depending on what the esc is trying to get. The battery cannot "push" more power, it can only give. Now to be clear, this is 100% what can be discussed as "punch" The higher the c the battery can do, the more "punch" you will see and feel out of the car. The rating printed on the box is technically irrelevant.
THE PROBLEM is that most people do not understand what they are saying and in my opinion, they are setting themselves up as the Pyramid/Jensen of the industry for people who have a general idea of batteries (such as most of us here) in an attempt to gain the business of the people who have no idea (bashers and newbies)
Either way, they NEED to explain themselves to gain back credibility to people like US or follow the current industry standard.
I believe that ACE goes the other way and under rates their "C" rating like Rockford Fosgate, etc.... since they are a major manufacturer over there and I am positive they have looked into marketing other types of consumer electronics.
At approximately 3 minutes, he states that he uses a 30 amp lightbulb discharger for testing. For layman, basically it is a row of car parking lights that in parallel add up to 30 amps of current. They used to be used to discharge sub c cells back in the day because 30 amps was a lot of pull back then.
As a side note, people also use configurations like these to discharge batteries in older cordless drills, etc... that use nicad batteries, not lipo.
He is going out on a limb, but being reasonable about the "average draw" that a 2wd vehicle pulls, but there are way too many variables to truly dumb this down as he has. You have to take into account gearing or incorrect gearing, track conditions, and especially driver throttle/brake control. Back in the day, everyone was limited to about 40 amps draw max and with most 1/10 rtr stuff he is correct. However today we have castle and tekin and viper and novak brushless systems that pull way more current than that during full throttle or braking.
For example, in a 5 minute heat, I generally use almost 1000 mah less than the local fast guys I compete against consistently. Therefore if I was running a zippy and one of the other guys was running a maxamps and we were going pretty much the same laps, etc.... everyone would assume the zippy was better because I try to be smooth in my driving style, etc... but in reality that is not necessarily accurate.
At 3:39, he completely proves he has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to c ratings. If you put a consistant 30 amp draw on any sort of battery on earth, it will show exactly that...30 amps of current draw. It is impossible for him to be able to get any other reading.... The ONLY possible way he could get any variance in his testing is if he is having a connection issue during a test (V=IR) good or bad and if he was using alligator clips, etc.... that would be the variances he was experiencing and quite possibly he could be seeing different voltage pulls if the bulbs pull more or less power when hot compared to cold. Once again, technically that would be a form of connection issue in the world of Ohm's law.
NOW just in case, what should happen is with stated MAH, the maxamps battery should have lasted longer than the 5000 packs and he is 100% correct at the 4 minutes area when hypothesizing about that. Everyone does have a valid complaint here. So was the battery mislabeled? Is it a 5000 with a sheet of lead at the bottom to appear bigger?
Back to c ratings, what he should have done with what he had was to test with 2 dischargers to jump it up to 60 amps as a comparison. Then he could see if there would be issues with the wires on the packs, if they could allow more release, etc..... and in a perfect world, if he was able to test the lumen output on the lights or at the bare minumum used his volt/ohm meter on the current draw setting in series during the test, he could then report how much output amps the packs were actually doing during the test.
Change of subject to maxamps.
Personally I HATE the fact that they are doing this "true c" rating as the consumer is not educated enough for them to pull this off. (THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT CRITICISM OF CONSUMER)
The only comparison I can think of is car stereo amplifiers with a rms rating and a ils rating. Many companies such as Rockford, Orion, Phoenix Gold, etc... rated their amps at rms ratings and many companies such as Pyramid, Jensen, Sony, etc.... rated at ils ratings. So you would see this amp for $100 that said 1000 WATTS! on the heatsink and all over the box, then you would see this 50 to 100 watt amp priced at $500.... Then of course, there was the variable of 12.8 volts or 14.3 volts to determine wattage ratings which confused the consumer even more.....but that is completely off topic...(sorry)
What maxamps is doing is they are saying that for short bursts, their battery can send out 150c IF an esc/motor is trying to pull it and they are probably correct in saying it can handle that. But once again, it is only relevant depending on what the esc is trying to get. The battery cannot "push" more power, it can only give. Now to be clear, this is 100% what can be discussed as "punch" The higher the c the battery can do, the more "punch" you will see and feel out of the car. The rating printed on the box is technically irrelevant.
THE PROBLEM is that most people do not understand what they are saying and in my opinion, they are setting themselves up as the Pyramid/Jensen of the industry for people who have a general idea of batteries (such as most of us here) in an attempt to gain the business of the people who have no idea (bashers and newbies)
Either way, they NEED to explain themselves to gain back credibility to people like US or follow the current industry standard.
I believe that ACE goes the other way and under rates their "C" rating like Rockford Fosgate, etc.... since they are a major manufacturer over there and I am positive they have looked into marketing other types of consumer electronics.
07-12-2011, 07:33 PM
#27
It's a good thing you help keep them on top.
OK, I am watching the "official video" of Jang. From what I understand, he is a guy that does some conversion kits and has his own site. Impressive, but I question his electrical engineering skills.
At approximately 3 minutes, he states that he uses a 30 amp lightbulb discharger for testing. For layman, basically it is a row of car parking lights that in parallel add up to 30 amps of current. They used to be used to discharge sub c cells back in the day because 30 amps was a lot of pull back then.
As a side note, people also use configurations like these to discharge batteries in older cordless drills, etc... that use nicad batteries, not lipo.
He is going out on a limb, but being reasonable about the "average draw" that a 2wd vehicle pulls, but there are way too many variables to truly dumb this down as he has. You have to take into account gearing or incorrect gearing, track conditions, and especially driver throttle/brake control. Back in the day, everyone was limited to about 40 amps draw max and with most 1/10 rtr stuff he is correct. However today we have castle and tekin and viper and novak brushless systems that pull way more current than that during full throttle or braking.
For example, in a 5 minute heat, I generally use almost 1000 mah less than the local fast guys I compete against consistently. Therefore if I was running a zippy and one of the other guys was running a maxamps and we were going pretty much the same laps, etc.... everyone would assume the zippy was better because I try to be smooth in my driving style, etc... but in reality that is not necessarily accurate.
At 3:39, he completely proves he has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to c ratings. If you put a consistant 30 amp draw on any sort of battery on earth, it will show exactly that...30 amps of current draw. It is impossible for him to be able to get any other reading.... The ONLY possible way he could get any variance in his testing is if he is having a connection issue during a test (V=IR) good or bad and if he was using alligator clips, etc.... that would be the variances he was experiencing and quite possibly he could be seeing different voltage pulls if the bulbs pull more or less power when hot compared to cold. Once again, technically that would be a form of connection issue in the world of Ohm's law.
NOW just in case, what should happen is with stated MAH, the maxamps battery should have lasted longer than the 5000 packs and he is 100% correct at the 4 minutes area when hypothesizing about that. Everyone does have a valid complaint here. So was the battery mislabeled? Is it a 5000 with a sheet of lead at the bottom to appear bigger?
Back to c ratings, what he should have done with what he had was to test with 2 dischargers to jump it up to 60 amps as a comparison. Then he could see if there would be issues with the wires on the packs, if they could allow more release, etc..... and in a perfect world, if he was able to test the lumen output on the lights or at the bare minumum used his volt/ohm meter on the current draw setting in series during the test, he could then report how much output amps the packs were actually doing during the test.
Change of subject to maxamps.
Personally I HATE the fact that they are doing this "true c" rating as the consumer is not educated enough for them to pull this off. (THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT CRITICISM OF CONSUMER)
The only comparison I can think of is car stereo amplifiers with a rms rating and a ils rating. Many companies such as Rockford, Orion, Phoenix Gold, etc... rated their amps at rms ratings and many companies such as Pyramid, Jensen, Sony, etc.... rated at ils ratings. So you would see this amp for $100 that said 1000 WATTS! on the heatsink and all over the box, then you would see this 50 to 100 watt amp priced at $500.... Then of course, there was the variable of 12.8 volts or 14.3 volts to determine wattage ratings which confused the consumer even more.....but that is completely off topic...(sorry)
What maxamps is doing is they are saying that for short bursts, their battery can send out 150c IF an esc/motor is trying to pull it and they are probably correct in saying it can handle that. But once again, it is only relevant depending on what the esc is trying to get. The battery cannot "push" more power, it can only give. Now to be clear, this is 100% what can be discussed as "punch" The higher the c the battery can do, the more "punch" you will see and feel out of the car. The rating printed on the box is technically irrelevant.
THE PROBLEM is that most people do not understand what they are saying and in my opinion, they are setting themselves up as the Pyramid/Jensen of the industry for people who have a general idea of batteries (such as most of us here) in an attempt to gain the business of the people who have no idea (bashers and newbies)
Either way, they NEED to explain themselves to gain back credibility to people like US or follow the current industry standard.
I believe that ACE goes the other way and under rates their "C" rating like Rockford Fosgate, etc.... since they are a major manufacturer over there and I am positive they have looked into marketing other types of consumer electronics.
At approximately 3 minutes, he states that he uses a 30 amp lightbulb discharger for testing. For layman, basically it is a row of car parking lights that in parallel add up to 30 amps of current. They used to be used to discharge sub c cells back in the day because 30 amps was a lot of pull back then.
As a side note, people also use configurations like these to discharge batteries in older cordless drills, etc... that use nicad batteries, not lipo.
He is going out on a limb, but being reasonable about the "average draw" that a 2wd vehicle pulls, but there are way too many variables to truly dumb this down as he has. You have to take into account gearing or incorrect gearing, track conditions, and especially driver throttle/brake control. Back in the day, everyone was limited to about 40 amps draw max and with most 1/10 rtr stuff he is correct. However today we have castle and tekin and viper and novak brushless systems that pull way more current than that during full throttle or braking.
For example, in a 5 minute heat, I generally use almost 1000 mah less than the local fast guys I compete against consistently. Therefore if I was running a zippy and one of the other guys was running a maxamps and we were going pretty much the same laps, etc.... everyone would assume the zippy was better because I try to be smooth in my driving style, etc... but in reality that is not necessarily accurate.
At 3:39, he completely proves he has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to c ratings. If you put a consistant 30 amp draw on any sort of battery on earth, it will show exactly that...30 amps of current draw. It is impossible for him to be able to get any other reading.... The ONLY possible way he could get any variance in his testing is if he is having a connection issue during a test (V=IR) good or bad and if he was using alligator clips, etc.... that would be the variances he was experiencing and quite possibly he could be seeing different voltage pulls if the bulbs pull more or less power when hot compared to cold. Once again, technically that would be a form of connection issue in the world of Ohm's law.
NOW just in case, what should happen is with stated MAH, the maxamps battery should have lasted longer than the 5000 packs and he is 100% correct at the 4 minutes area when hypothesizing about that. Everyone does have a valid complaint here. So was the battery mislabeled? Is it a 5000 with a sheet of lead at the bottom to appear bigger?
Back to c ratings, what he should have done with what he had was to test with 2 dischargers to jump it up to 60 amps as a comparison. Then he could see if there would be issues with the wires on the packs, if they could allow more release, etc..... and in a perfect world, if he was able to test the lumen output on the lights or at the bare minumum used his volt/ohm meter on the current draw setting in series during the test, he could then report how much output amps the packs were actually doing during the test.
Change of subject to maxamps.
Personally I HATE the fact that they are doing this "true c" rating as the consumer is not educated enough for them to pull this off. (THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT CRITICISM OF CONSUMER)
The only comparison I can think of is car stereo amplifiers with a rms rating and a ils rating. Many companies such as Rockford, Orion, Phoenix Gold, etc... rated their amps at rms ratings and many companies such as Pyramid, Jensen, Sony, etc.... rated at ils ratings. So you would see this amp for $100 that said 1000 WATTS! on the heatsink and all over the box, then you would see this 50 to 100 watt amp priced at $500.... Then of course, there was the variable of 12.8 volts or 14.3 volts to determine wattage ratings which confused the consumer even more.....but that is completely off topic...(sorry)
What maxamps is doing is they are saying that for short bursts, their battery can send out 150c IF an esc/motor is trying to pull it and they are probably correct in saying it can handle that. But once again, it is only relevant depending on what the esc is trying to get. The battery cannot "push" more power, it can only give. Now to be clear, this is 100% what can be discussed as "punch" The higher the c the battery can do, the more "punch" you will see and feel out of the car. The rating printed on the box is technically irrelevant.
THE PROBLEM is that most people do not understand what they are saying and in my opinion, they are setting themselves up as the Pyramid/Jensen of the industry for people who have a general idea of batteries (such as most of us here) in an attempt to gain the business of the people who have no idea (bashers and newbies)
Either way, they NEED to explain themselves to gain back credibility to people like US or follow the current industry standard.
I believe that ACE goes the other way and under rates their "C" rating like Rockford Fosgate, etc.... since they are a major manufacturer over there and I am positive they have looked into marketing other types of consumer electronics.
07-12-2011, 07:37 PM
#28
Just be glad you have choices. I have used maxamps and many other brands.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
I have not had trouble from any of the brands I have used.
Maxamps,IP,Racers Edge, TP,SMC and others.
You can not bash them just because you think they are overpriced. You can simply choose not to buy them.
I have found that there is a full spectrum of buyers in this world.
There are people who can not bring themselves to buy the cheapest batteries they can find all way to the other end of the spectrum of buying the most expensive batteries one can find.
Last edited by peter george; 07-21-2011 at 05:22 PM.
07-12-2011, 07:45 PM
#29
As a side note, he would definitely want to be paying close attention to the batteries at 60 amp draw as it would probably get them really hot and possibly damage them, but then you would have an idea if the c rating was accurate. I believe the maxamps would produce similar results as the others.
Personally, I support maxamps for what they do for the industry and I try to defend them. However, in my opinion, they need to either give out more information or they need to reevaluate their marketing of c ratings unless there ends up being a standard.
While I was writing the book above, a perfect example was made about the 65 vs 150. It isn't an apple to apple comparison, BUT just as I stated, the average consumer and even fairly knowledgeable racer doesn't know.
What they should do is put an asterisk on the 150c and then give out an abbreviated version of what I said about being able to keep up with the rigorous demands of pro level escs and motors.
Personally, I support maxamps for what they do for the industry and I try to defend them. However, in my opinion, they need to either give out more information or they need to reevaluate their marketing of c ratings unless there ends up being a standard.
While I was writing the book above, a perfect example was made about the 65 vs 150. It isn't an apple to apple comparison, BUT just as I stated, the average consumer and even fairly knowledgeable racer doesn't know.
What they should do is put an asterisk on the 150c and then give out an abbreviated version of what I said about being able to keep up with the rigorous demands of pro level escs and motors.
