It sounds like you may have received a bad reedy. Your batteries shouldn't get much above room temperature, even after running for 20+ minutes with a good mod driving aggressively. Mine don't, ever. The warmest my most abused reedy got was "Hey, this thing isn't ice cold this time" -- I would have to estimate it was around 75F in a room that was 70F ambient, and most of that heat probably came from the speedo and motor right next to the battery.

I run only reedy batteries and mine really never get out of balance, but then again, I balance charge them every time. You shouldn't be charging over 8.4 volts as charging over 4.2 per cell will start converting lithium ions into lithium metal on the electrodes inside -- basically a cumulative ticking time bomb. There is tolerance built into that 4.2 volts per cell number, but please be careful!

What you are paying for with a higher priced battery is more quality control and certification. There are only a few actual cell makers, so they all come from the same places, much like nimh/nicd did, so you're really paying for the hard case certification, craftsmanship, warranty, and quality control. Every manufacturer makes a dud once in a while -- if your cells are getting way out of balance and the batteries are getting hot, you really need to talk to reedy honestly because that's not normal.

One more thing, depending on how/where your lipo cutoff is set, you may be damaging your cells, which will greatly skew your results.

Wayne