Buying Guide: How to Pick Out the Best RC Car Battery?

The RC hobby battery, as is well-known, is the power source of the remote controlled models. It provides the energy needed for the components of the radio control vehicles such as the motor and electric speed control (aka ESC). When running out of power, your vehicle would stop and cannot move forward immediately. Besides, customizing the remote control car is not allowed according to the competition rules. Therefore, choosing the best RC car battery indicates the longer runtime, greater punch, and the rapid speed. But how to pick out the most appropriate battery for your RC machine? This article will guide you to learn something about batteries that you're supposed to comprehend.

The RC Battery Jargon - Battery voltage, capacity, and discharge rate

When you're going to select radio control batteries from the online battery shop at the first time, you'll be puzzled by the numbers and the measurements on the battery label as the picture shown below, so what does the lingo stand for?

Battery Voltage

As we have mentioned at the beginning, the battery voltage is closely relevant to the PRM (Revolutions Per Minute) of the electric motor ( the units of the brushless motor is kV that indicates PRM per volt.). That is to say, the voltage decides the speed of the radio control vehicle. In other words, the higher the voltage of a battery pack, the more the motor rotates and the faster the remote controlled car would be. Hence, which voltage of a battery pack you purchase would also mean what kinds of the motor and electric speed control you'll pick out. In addition, the nominal voltage of a cell is 3.7V that also refers to 1S. The two-cell pack has 7.4V (2S) and the three-cell battery owns 11.1V (3S).

Battery Capacity

The capacity of a battery pack is rated by Amp-hrs or milliamp-hrs. It refers to the amount of power that a battery pack can hold in. The battery capacity is related to the runtime of your radio control models. The newcomers might still confused about the capacity. It indicates the process of a battery from the full voltage to the cut-off voltage in exactly one hour and measures the amount of constant current in the meanwhile.

Discharge Rate

When it comes to the selection of the RC car battery, the discharge rate is an essential factor that you need to pay more attention to since there is a high requirement of discharge rate in the RC application. It's also known as the C rating. A battery possesses a maximum continuous current rating and maximum current rating. In the runtime of the radio control vehicle, the current rating maximum that the car applies for a long time is the continuous current rating. But if you suddenly speed up the vehicle for short periods of time (10 seconds), the maximum current rating of the battery here is the burst rating.

The Connector Types

There are two main types of lipo battery connectors including the main power plug and the balance plug. They also have different kinds respectively that are diverse in size, current rating, and ease of use.

Main Power Connectors

XT 60	T plug	EC3	JST-RCY

 

There are 4 general types of main power connectors involving XT 60, T plug, EC3, JST-RCY. The XT60 is the commonly used connector for batteries, which mostly apply to the 250 frame quadcopters (2S, 3S, 4S). This plug can reach its maximum continuous current rating up to 60 Amps. It's easy to use compared with other kinds of connectors. T connector, also known as Dean style plug, is made with the high-temperature nylon and takes load up to 50 Amps. The maximum continuous current rating of the EC3 connector is 60 Amps and EC3 easily connect but is difficult to disconnect. JST RCY Connectors can reach up to 3 Amps continuous current and are compact, durable, but difficult to connect backward.

Balance Connectors

JST-XH is the most prevailing balance connector that owns a variety of different plugs based on the number of cells in a battery pack. Besides, there are also other kinds of balance connectors such as TP (Thunderpower) and Polyquest (Hyperion).

The Cost of the Lipo Battery

Last but not least, you should take the battery price into consideration. Most of the time, we would buy more than a pack of battery ( you know, RC application require a lot of energy). Therefore, it's necessary to select quality and cost-efficient batteries. Maybe you find it hard to find such a desirable battery. Ovonic battery would be highly recommended on account of its higher cost performance. You can have a try and wouldn't be disappointed. So where to buy lipo batteries in Australia? You got it!

To sum up, to comprehend the jargon of battery, the types of connectors, and the cost is of paramount significance for choosing the optimum RC car battery. Hope you can have a deeper understanding of RC battery and how to select the appropriate batteries for your radio control vehicle.

If you want to learn how to care and storage lipo batteries, you can read this article: https://www.ovonicshop.com/blogs/how-to/how-to-storage-lipo-batteries