Lipo comparison
 

Lets put our heads and experience together and compile a lipo comparison chart. What I'd like to see are side by side comparisons of all the brands. It can be subjective comparisons as long as the two (or more) brands are compared on the same vehicle under the same conditions.

I've been running Gens Ace for a while now. The original Gens Ace 5000mAh 40C's that I bought are pretty much spent now but lasted quite a while, didn't puff and had decent punch when new. These packs still after tons of cycles show no signs of puffing whatsoever. I bought another batch of Gens Ace 5000mAh 40C's with the integrated plug and balance plug and they were adequately punchy but puffed up soon after purchase. I also purchased a 5300mAh 65C Gens Ace and have been very happy with the punch and lack of puff. I've also run an Excelorin 5000mAh 40C pack. This thing is scary-big puffed (I don't even run it much anymore) but it had more punch to start with than the Gens Ace packs of comparable specs.

Anyone else got any input?

Currently I am in the market for few batteries for off road use. I'm looking at Gens Ace, Turnigy Nanotech, Zippy and SMC +5000mAh 65C packs. I'm trying to keep my price at or below $50 per pack.

Take a look at the thread by SMC. They have done extensive testing and comparing and found out what we all thought. The ratings from batt to batt and company to company are a bunch of bull. You can find 40 C batts that outperform 65 C batts.

Here are some of my 2S lipo battery comparison.

Look at team zombies they are great

I have had bad luck with Turnigy and GForce. For budget batteries hard to beat Gens Ace or SMC. The benefit to SMC is the accuracy of the estimates and top notch customer service for about the same price.

The more I see of SMC the more impressed I am. The owner appears to be a pretty honest straight-shooter and that always scores high in my book.

Im in!! In the last month, I bought a Gens Ace 5A 50c, GForce Elite Series 6A 70c, and a Turnigy Nano-Tech 6.6A 65c. Next friday im ordering an SMC Race Formula 7.2A 70c. Four batteries should be able to carry me for racing purposes. I just completed a 5 cycle break in of the lipo's today so they are ready to go. I've been logging all charge data including I.R. so im interested to see how things go.

I've had a bad turnigy battery right out of the box. don't waste your time with them. it started out about .20 difference between the 2 cells.
one cell went completely dead on it's own all the way down to .80 of a volt.

I'll never buy another turnigy pos battery again.

+1. I bought 2 saddle pack nanotechs and only 3 out of 4 cells were fine. the 4th one was reading 0.00V Completely dead.
Having said that, alot of guys at our track use nanotechs with no problems at all.

Im running SMC saddles in my bmax 4 and they are excellent. Low IR too.

+1 on Turnigy and GForce, I've had some serious quality control issues based on my last purchases. For roughly the same price I can get an SMC.

How many cycles do you have on them?

I bought 4. 2 standard and 2 nano's. both of the nano's are just fine. 1 of the 2 regular was shot right out of the box.
and the other 3 seem to operate just fine. but for the time it takes to get them in the first place, you'd be waiting a month for a new one. it's a waste of effort and time.

plus you have to register the battery on their site within 24hrs of getting it or there is no warranty. which is BS. there's no reason to have to do that. and they don't make it noticable that you need to do that until you need to return it. then it's a big, bold, italic, highlighted heading on the return page:lol:
but when you buy them there's no mention of that anywhere unless you actually sit there and read the warranty page.:rolleyes:

I'm going to give a gens ace battery a try. then a SMC. I would of done it the other way around but I forgot about smc until after I ordered the gens ace. anyway I've seen gens ace batteries in all kinds of things not just in the rc market. so the must be a big company.

Which Gens Ace did you get? I really like my 5300mAh 65C. It kicks tail on all of my other packs and hasn't puffed a bit.

Ben, im running the Sky Lipo 5000 40C packs. I really like them so far. I had one with a bad solder job, but i just opened the case and fixed it. While i was in there i noticed that the lipo actually read Sky Lipo 5100mah.

Yeah, I didn't even throw the Sky Lipo stuff into the equation. Probably should.

http://www.hobbypartz.com/98p-50c-50...22-direct.html
site had limited choices due to being out of stock on some of the other ones that would fit my needs better.
I don't need the 5000mah. at 4000 my car can go 20 mins. I just hope it's not too tall for my b4.1. a 23mm high one is kind of just right that gens ace is 25mm. hopefully that measurement is 1-2mm too generous like the turnigy is. it's spec is 23 but only comes in at 21.5mm.

I wonder how these glacier batteries are...(hard cases at the bottom) they come with a deans connector too. (what I use). the prefered kind of bullet connector everyone likes.
the reason I didn't order it is they're in the same state so I would have had to pay tax and shipping. F that noise lol
http://epbuddy.com/index.php?main_pa...ex&cPath=22_23

The Gens Ace 5000mAh packs will fit in the B4.1. That's one of the cars that I have run them in. I'll be interested to hear what you think of that pack. That's one of them that I had a problem with puffing on. They also haven't held punch over time like the first batch did. I had heard that there were extra ingredients being added to the cells that shortened the life but that they may have stopped adding it. Who knows...

C rating question
 

I have been running 6500mah 70c batteries in my Losi SCTE. I am putting together a TC4 VTA racer and picked up a couple of 5000mah 35c batteries for it. If the smaller batteries found thier way into my Losi on occasion will I harm the batteries? or will I just notice sluggish performance on the Losi...

Seeing as there doesn't appear to be any regulation or standards for the C ratings its tough to even say what you truly have. Either way, the battery is only going to be able to supply as much as it is capable of (true C rating). It shouldn't damage the packs but you will definitely notice that it will be pretty sluggish.

Thanks that's what I thought I just wanted to be sure. I am going to test it out and see how much different they really are. They are the same brand.

I don’t have a SCTE myself, but as I understand it they can be pretty tough on batteries, depending on motor, gearing, and such. If the amps are too high the lipo will heat up. If way too high it could cause issues including thermal runaway, not good.

Maybe do a test, start with short runs, and check the lipo temperature carefully. If it’s up to the task there should be very little heat.

Did any of you check out he bigsquidrc rc lipo shoot outs? Some great info there.

Sigs

I have thats what made me seek out a gens ace. their test wasn't just some guy with a pad of paper, a stop watch and multimeter.:lol:
a little more scientific done with test equipment specifically for testing batteries and a computer. they put the gens ace way up there in the results.

http://www.bigsquidrc.com/lipo-batte...0-mah-edition/

I like how they do the bench test but also follow it up with some track testing. I'd be a big fan of Gens Ace if their quality level was at the level it was early on. A lot of these packs perform when you take them out of the box but fade and puff really quickly. That's not real easy for anyone to test.

As far as side by side comparison I think you will be hard pressed to accurately determine much of anything unless you are a extremely consistant driver and running onroad. If you do that I think you will find SMC to be at the top of the pile.
At our local Onroad track Lou's Speedway and Hobbies a top runner in the WGT/SCAR class Adam Hutchison set his best and the tracks fast time on his 1st run with a new SMC 1S pack. In 1/12 class where a good pack shows up more than in most classes SMC is at the top of the chart consistantly.
As far as bench comparison, value, service etc...... hands down SMC.
I purchased an IR tester to that I could do comparisons with other battery brands that I have run and consistantly SMC is by far lower IR and more equal IR than any other packs I have tested, including so called "High end" packs and value packs.

TERRA NOVA
 

hey folks... try the TERRA NOVA packs up here in Canada. Instead of taking up space here... go to the thread and read some of the posts. I REALLY like these packs.
http://www.rctech.net/forum/canadian...ipo-packs.html

does anyone on here have the ir tested to actually calculate the real c values of the lipo's?

Measuring I.R. is the only accurate way to check the battery's condition. How do you calculate the actual C rate from an I.R. measurement?

More info that you might find interesting.
http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=357870

well the first few times I ran it it wouldn't charge higher than 4.0v each cell. and the run time was pretty short compared to the turnigy. I get 18 min at min on it. I didn't time it but it seemed at least 8 min shorter.
I've ran and charged it about 3 times now and it's finally taking a full 4.20 charge but I put it on 4amps instead of 5 and 6 like I did the first few times. maybe that's too high for a new batt or too high for the gens ace batt.

it didn't say not to. all I know is the 3 turnigy batteries I have all take a high amp charge no problem. the nano's I have say they can take a 10+ amp charge.

I just bought these two packs. They've been cycled twice. The data is from a charge that brings them up to the storage voltage after the send run. First is a Promatch 4600 shorty, the other is a SMC 4600 (not quite 4600 according to their site) shorty.

http://i514.photobucket.com/albums/t...psae5344eb.jpg

http://i514.photobucket.com/albums/t...ps22bd78ca.jpg

On the GForce 3

On the Turnigy 6

That's it?? And you're having problems with both?

I just ordered 3 5600mAh 70 C's from SMC for my kid's trucks (T4.1, SC10). I'll let you all know what I think after we get them. I will be comparing to a 5300mAh 65C Gens Ace so it won't be exactly apples to apples but close. The SMC +7000mAh 70C's that I want for my SCTE are due in Feb 8th.

I have a powerlab 8 on the way, and I plan on logging battery data after every race, and record down the cycles in between data logs. The majority of the data will be from SMC 7200 70c batteries, but i do have some Reedy 6500s that I will compare them too.

I am sure my data will reflect Danny's hard work at SMC!