Share your views on the expensive 'known brand' batteries such as SMC, LRP and other high priced brands that produce lipo packs.
Do you think they are just the same as turnigy or unbranded lipo's? if not, why...
Would be nice to hear some difference opinions going on :)
Personally, Unless you are a serious racer, like Adam Drake level, it would probably be pointless to spend alot on lipo batteries. At most i would spend 50 dollars on a 2s lipo. I use the Gens Ace lipos from hobbypartz.com and they are amazing for the money. They actually perform better than what is claimed on the label.
The only big-brand lipos I buy are from ThunderPower and that's the only company I would ever give my money to for top shelf cells. You get what you pay for from Thunderpower, period. Yes they are considerably more expensive then Hobbyking or partz lipos but that's because you're guaranteed to have a pack that meets or exceeds it's rating. Thunderpower uses true quality control for their packs.
Now that being said all other cheap brands are so significantly cheaper that you can buy a handful at the price of one name brand in case you get a bad pack. In my experience if you need a 25C pack and you want to buy cheap, buy a 30c or higher and buy a few...
i think lipo cells are like cpu manufacturing , they make thousands then test them some may run 2.2 ghz some may run 1.2 ghz then they separate them accordingly
Interesting concept :)
I kinda agree with Anderson here, perhaps turnigy and gen ace packs are good enough for the club and amateur racers. It would be good to see RCN do a non biased review between 3-4 packs, all of which being a mixture of cheap and expensive ones.
batman nailed it. I think most people would be surprised if they started tracing lipo cell sources from different companies. Most of them come from the same place. The difference between brands is the amount of testing and quality control they use. There isn't one best brand rather many good name and off-brands to choose from based on the application.
Perhaps RCN or FRC will do a non-biased comparison in the future. Just keep in mind it's tough to measure quality and quantity over a period of time. I've got TP packs from 5 years ago still performing at or above their rating; but then again I run HK packs for my daily mode of transportation =]