Parramatta Radio Control Aircraft Club

Full Version: ZIPPY versus TURNIGY ( lipos)
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just thought i would post a thread on what i have found regarding these two brands of lipo battery packs .
When i first got into electric rc 12 months ago , i purchased my 1st planes with TURNIGY lipo batteries , buying chargers and learning about balancing cells , i got into the habit of always balance charging . However over the course of a few different types of model planes , i have purchased some ZIPPY batteries mainly because of size matching to the plane , and Turnigy batteries being out of stock at HK .
Therefore i have tried both ZIPPY and TURNIGY lipo battery packs , and have noticed SUPERIOR quality in TURNIGY batteries everytime .

DIFFERENCES . mainly cell charge , turnigy battery cells almost always charge to within 0.02 v per cell , allowing the charger to balance charge batteries in the minimal time .
ZIPPY on the other hand even coming evenly balanced from factory , will have a much higher variance of cell charge such as 0.2v per cell .
With such high variance in cell charge the balance charger has a very hard time trying to balance charge the cells and will cut back the amps accordingly off the highest charged cells , this causes 2 problems in the charge , 1 problem being the highest charge cell is fully charged whilst the others are not , which potentially causes a smaller capacity of the battery pack by up to almost 10% i have observed .
this means a 3000mah battery pack with unbalanced cells may have the same capacity as a 2700mah pack .
the way we have to put up or tolerate this is either . leave the charger to balance cells , this takes approx 2 hours versus 40 minutes if the battery pack is a good one .
OR . do not plug in the balance plug and charge on charge only .

IN my opinion , from what i have experienced is TURNIGY BATTERIES ARE SUPERIOR IN QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OVER ZIPPY BATTERIES .
I think the Rhino Lipo from HK packs were very good I have a few of those that have had a great deal of use. Better than the blue turnigys. The yellow Zippys I hear are very good but I havn't tried enough of them to be able to say. I know George has some

It's important especially with the higher C rated packs to bring them back to storage charge level if your not using them and only charge them on the day your going to use them or the night before.
then you seem to get a better run out of them
In the old days of HK, things have changed a bit now:

ZippyH / Rhino = Polyquest rejects (But still quite good)

Zippy = Standard chinese lipo factory

Turnigy = Hobbyking lipo factory with increased QA and attention to slurry mixes