3S 2200 lipo comparison

Written by Ashley Davis Wednesday, 18 November 2009 09:33

Six packs are on test in this 3S 2200 lipo comparison. This test is somewhat different to the 200/250 3S 800mah tests I've been doing recently in that these packs have all been both flight tested and given some extended usage to see how they fare over a longer period of ownership. We also have the controlled test of the lipo through our usual lipo test scenario of full power and pitch pumps.

Missing from the test data is the Outrage 3S 2200 30C which failed before reaching 20 cycles, however, it's performance was almost identical to the Maxpoly before failing.

Here's a quick gallery of the products on test:

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Moving swiftly on then, what packs have we got in this test:

Name	Supplier	Size	Weight	C rating	Price
Thunder Power 3S 2250 Pro Power	Thunder Power	100x32x24mm	183g	30C	£49.99
Maxpoly 3S 2200	Maxpoly	113x32x25mm	190g	30C	£23.95
Revolectrix 3S 2200 Platinum	Aurorra	100x32x24mm	184g	35C	£52
Loong Max 3S 2250	GiantCod	109x33x24mm	202g	30C	£26.58
Hyperion 3S 2200 VX G3	Robot Birds	104x32x24mm	196g	35C	£41.95

Flight Test

The test in this instance is split into two sections. The first section was inflight testing with a datalogger. In this part of the test I was flying a 3D flight designed to really stress the packs to the maximum. This included a lot of tic tocs, hard pitch changes with full pitch applied and generally a lot of pitch pump style moves. Also all these flights were datalogged within the first 10 cycles of the pack.

Each pack was flown until I had datalogs over 4 minutes where the average amp draw was within 1A of each other across the entire 4 minute flight. The point of doing this is to try to get a fair inflight comparison and not push one pack harder than all the rest. I used the Oracle datalogger for this as it allows the graphs to be overlaid for comparison purposes. Having done this I then displayed the voltage across the flight to see how the pack was coping. Also, as I am actually flying the packs there was the feedback of directly flying the model and having a feel for which pack was performing best.

All the packs put in a decent 3D performance and I would be happy with any of them, however, there were noticeable differences. The Maxpoly felt the least powerful and unsurprisingly on the logs it showed to be the case. After this the packs were all very close and it was difficult to split them. My gut feel was that the Loong Max was giving the best performance, followed closely by the Hyperion and Revolectrix and then only a short margin behind this the Thunder Power. However, the top 3 were very difficult to split and it was just a suspicion that the Loong Max was giving the most.

Flight Test Results

The overlaid graph of all the packs voltage is below.

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The two lowest packs on voltage were the maxpoly (easy to see) and the Thunder Power (not easy to see, I had to go to the figures to separate it out).

This left the top 3 packs and you can see the logs below:

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The top perfroming pack by the smallest of margins is the Loong Max, followed by the Hyperion and then the Revolectrix. These are all so close though that it really is like splitting hairs separating these packs, most pilots would struggle to discern any performance difference.

So after inflight test the running order is as follows:

1. Loong Max
2. Hyperion
3. Revolectrix
4. Thunder Power
5. Maxpoly

Following this test I then continued to run the packs regularly until each pack had completed over 20 cycles.

The test process

So, how are we going to bench test these three packs? Well it's the usual setup for a 'tuning' lipo test. The test is to be performed within the model, so no fancy dischargers placing completely unrealistic loadings on the pack, this is real world 'what does it do in the model'. The helicopter used for the test is my own T-Rex 450 PRO which has an upgraded Scorpion motor and runs carbon blades all round.

The test consists of a 30 second run in idle up with 0 degrees pitch on the blades, this is to get us past the initial extra power all lipos have at the beginning of the flight, I want to see what happens once you are past that and into the main body of the flight. At 30 seconds we introduce full positive pitch and hold it for 10 seconds, essentially this is the equivalent of a nice long climbout. This is followed by 5 seconds of 0 degress pitch to allow the lipo to recover and then we go into a full pitch pump with maximum positive and negative pitch for the last 15 seconds. Essentially we are mimicking a very badly controlled tic toc for this last section.

This is a comparative test of the battery, so headspeed is of little relevance, what we are looking at here is voltage, the higher the better the pack is coping.

Lastly I check pack temps after the test and if any pack is significantly hot (over 50 degrees C) I take a temp measurement.

Bench Test Results

The results can be seen below and I'll analyse these in detail. See the top of the graph for the pack name.

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So let's take the graphs and place them into a table for comparison purposes.

Pack	Low Voltage	Max Voltage	Average Voltage	Max Amps	Average Amps
Hyperion	10.21	12.44	11.01	42.08	25.33
Loong Max	10.14	12.3	10.98	41.35	24.41
Maxpoly	9.23	12.3	10.47	37.97	21.88
Revolectrix	10.54	12.37	11.2	42.93	25.04
Thunder Power	10.21	12.37	11.07	42.56	24.86

Analysing this data we can see that for the full pitch test the best voltage hold order was as follows:

1. Revolectrix
2. Hyperion, Thunder Power
3. Loong Max
4. Maxpoly

Based on average voltage held across the entire test the order is as follows:

1. Revolectrix
2. Thunder Power
3. Hyperion
4. Loong Max
5. Maxpoly

Based on the two test results we can draw some conclusions.

Firstly all these packs performed well at under 10 cycles usage but the Loong Max had the edge extremely closely followed by the Hyperion, Revolectrix and Thunder Power. A little way behind these was the Maxpoly. All returned a decent 3D flight with no lack of power.

20+ cycles later things have changed, the Loong Max has dropped some performance to fourth place, the Hyperion and Thunder Power are pretty much equal footing in second and the Revolectrix is showing some very good form outperforming the other cells quite convincingly. The Maxpoly is showing some worrying signs, voltage on the full pitch test would be hitting my low voltage cutoff at only 9.23V. The indication here is that the pack is rather unfortunately on it's way out. Interestingly of the five the Revolectrix came into this test with the most cycles (by a very small margin). The Revolectrix is also the only pack that has had what I consider to be a failure in that one of the balance leads came off, I soldered it back on but for the purposes of the test I need to mention it.

Here are all five tests  shown side by side and you can see the difference, left to right the packs are: Maxpoly, Revolectrix, Thunder Power, Loong Max, Hyperion.

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Conclusion

Four of these cells are really performing quite closely to one another early in life, later in life one cell has kept it's performance (Revolectrix) and the other 3 have dropped away slightly but are still actually performing very nicely. One pack is looking like it's suffering (Maxpoly). If I was purely ranking these packs on performance then the Revolectrix would be the winner based on it's longevity and then I'd probably go with any of the others (except the Maxpoly) as they are so close (0.1V or less separating them on the test).

Taking cost into consideration one has to take a wider view. The Hyperion, Revolectrix and Thunder Power are premium priced brands, the Revolectrix being the most expensive. The Loong Max is a budget brand and is just over half the price of the Revolectrix, the Maxpoly is also a budget brand and is under half the price of the Revolectrix.

Based on this the Revolectrix has to be the test winner but the Loong Max gets the second spot based on being an absolute bargain for the performance it delivers. That said I'd not be disappointed with any of these cells from an ownership perspective except for the Maxpoly which at this stage looks like it's not going to go much more than 30 cycles..... perhaps the pack is faulty, I can't see any obvious issues and therefore I have to stand by the test results.

Lastly, this test goes to show that what you get when a pack is new may not be what you end up with 20 cycles later and this has to be considered when looking at long term ownership.

( 18 Votes )