guver

My Feedback: (325)

FWIW , I am willing to test any Maxamps pack that anyone is willing to send me. I will put it with similar specc'ed packs with overlaid graphs. In fact I am willing to test ANY brand pack. Generally I like to test at constant current , room temp start , and at various currents up to the max constant specified by the manufacturer. This is the fairest way.

Let's do this now (in the off-season)

Pede_VXL

Thats really cool of you guver. I wish I had the money to get the ball rolling and buy one for the test. I sure would be very interested in the results.
Also, any packs that do get tested will hopefully be RANDOM, off-the-shelf packs, free of any "special treatment" so to speak such as directly from a manufacturer who knows that the exact pack will be tested...

I really hope this does happen. Wish I had the funds though to help...

guver

My Feedback: (325)

I hope so. It wasn't worth it to send cheap packs back and forth for testing so I'm going to cover some of the cheapos myself and buy them. The expensive ones though might be worth sending once or twice.

[] I say "once" because they may not make it thru the test. [X(] Then we don;t have to worry about return shipping , hewhehe.

TraxxJUNK

Since we are now fast-forwarded almost 5 years into the future from when this thread was active, does anyone know if MaxAmps has evolved any in their business and now getting their battery cells from the USA? Or are they still getting cheap run-of-the-mill China cells that are no different than those which are used in packs which cost 4 times less?

For the prices MaxAmps charges, there is (in my opinion) zero justification to buy them no matter how good the warranty is (people are actually better off just buying 4 packs of another commonly priced brand and have 3 spares on hand at all time if one fails!!), and no matter how good the shrink wrap, soldiering, wires and connectors are (all less than $10 or so of supplies) and the few minutes of labor it is to finalize the last stages of production. Am I missing something?? If so, please inform me.

Having all that profit (from newbies and people who dont think much for themselves into things) allows for lots or marketing money which helps reach more non-thinking people, and newbies.

So, if the cells are now made in the USA, and their production is still in the USA, the costs of these pack MAY (repeat: MAY) be SOMEWHAT (repeat: SOMEWHAT) justified and then this post can be disregarded. Otherwise, if they are STILL getting cheaper run-of-the-mill China made cells (they will be run-of-the-mills because no huge Chinese factory will manufacture cells solely for a small operation), then how is it better to not just buy one battery pack from a common typical priced battery pack company, along with 3 spares, and be way ahead of the game?

And Page 6 of this thread has some good info for anyone new to this thread.

So, the million dollar question: Are their cells still coming from China?

RustyUs

The general consensus, that I got over the years is... there are only a handful of makers of LiPo batteries. I would also assume when making the cells, there are different quality of cells being held out for top brands to put their names on. How far the cells are actually being tested, and what goes through the assembly line...I don't know; most of the time...I don't care.

As long as I can find a good (or what I think is good) 40C pack at a good price, I'm content. If I were to be racing on a regular basis, I would maybe dish out extra $$ just for some extra "punch" or extra gain associated with reserved "the good stuff" used in Spec/Stock class racing. Spec Class racing (Stock Class back in the day) is a money pit. It's never ending IMO. People will pay big bucks for the minute (my-noot) increase in performance on anything to get the advantage.

Maj_Overdrive

My Feedback: (11)

Lipo cells are not and likely will never be manufactured in the U.S. due to environmental laws. Like anything manufactured in another country things are made "per spec" for the company buying them. Or in some cases (lipos likely included) companies pay for cells that meet a certain spec or get first dibs on a production run. Higher paying customers get the better cells, the lower end cells go to the lower paying customers.

That has not changed at MaxAmps. While I'd love to vilify them for their inflated prices that support their ridiculous advertising budget that buys them their magazine awards there's a bigger problem that all manufacturers engage in, inflated c ratings. MaxAmps is ridiculous with theirs choosing to confuse the issue even further with their non standard system but all manufacturers are inflating their ratings. If you think you can reliably pull 200amps from a 40c 5000mah pack your dead wrong. What is really needed is an ISO certified standard for the testing of c ratings to put everyone on a level playing field and give us real ratings. But no manufacturer wants that, otherwise we'd still be seeing discharge graphs posted on the forums by manufacturers (or assemblers whatever the case may be) like we did in the beginning of MaxAmps and lipos in general.

collector1231

My Feedback: (1)

Great job TraxxJunk; you bumped a 5 year old thread all because you neglected to read the date it was originally posted. You can make you own thread, you know.

Maj_Overdrive

My Feedback: (11)

TraxxJUNK acknowledges that the thread is 5yrs old in the first sentence of his post. And as also mentioned there's some good info in there too which isnt a bad reason to bump an oldie. It also keeps things consolidated instead of clogging the forum with a new thread. I have my pet peeves on forum behavior too but you neglected to read his post and were too quick to condemn.

Socollector1231

Large Larry

After seeing this thread I decided to look around on maxamp's website... one thing that struck me as being odd other than their insane prices and inflated C ratings was the fact that all of their products have received glowing reviews from customers, every single customer review has a 5 star rating. This is something I find hard to believe, especially when you consider the climate of most discussions about their packs on various forums. I don't normally like to speculate but it seems to me as though these reviews are either fake or they just don't approve any reviews that are in any way negative. If I am right it's a very dishonest and shady way of doing business.

I'll keep buying SPC packs myself, their customer service isn't great, and if you have a warranty claim they make you jump though way too many hoops which makes their warranties almost non existent (if you have any issues with their packs I hope you have detailed information on how you charged them and what your voltages were at all times), but their prices vs quality can't be beaten.

radfordc

My Feedback: (14)

Easy to find out. Post a mediocre review and see if it shows up.

Maj_Overdrive

My Feedback: (11)

I'm not going to dispute the reviews on their website although I do doubt them. Any legitimate reviews are likely new users who've never had another manufacturers lipo and are probably new to lipo in general. I've had lipo for almost 10 years now and have experience with 6 different manufacturers spread out over those years.

But Maxamps gets the newbies, hell they got me at one point. I was new and had middle of the road (price wise) Polyquest packs for my first lipos and decided to try what I thought would be a higher end pack so I bought a Maxamps pack. No performance difference, started dropping cells within a year. Their advertising dollars buys them glowing reviews in magazines, the editors use them in magazine vehicles etc. And we all know magazines don't criticize products very much if at all, I mean the vehicles they review never break for crying out loud. Forums are a different story though. Shortly after buying my Maxamps pack I found RC-Monster and those guys don't pull many punches. The Maxamps boys used to visit to try and quell any talk of bad experiences but they failed miserably and eventually stopped trying. RC-Monster members were generally very experienced and had saved conversations and data logger data to refute any false claims by Maxamps.

Maxamps had more luck bending Jang over at URC to their will though. Jang can be a harsh critic, but he's pretty fair as he shows you exactly how and why he came to his conclusions in his reviews. He did a lipo comparison, Maxamps, Gens-Ace, Turnigy and one other battery was included as well. There was some data logging and his impressions on the power delivered during use. Of course Maxamps was outperformed by much cheaper packs (I think they placed 3rd) and they weren't happy about it. They threatened legal action against Jang and URC, apparently the fact he relies on advertisers and gets $ from YouTube views disqualifies him from whatever legal protections other reviewers like Comsumer Reports have. Either that or Jang just didn't want to spend the $ to fight them and he pulled the review from YouTube and the URC forums. To keep Maxamps happy he also had to censor the URC forums and try to keep the users there from talking bad about Maxamps. Maxamps is actually in the URC forum word filter so it is not possible to talk about them at all, good or bad. Maxamps is probably thrilled though, one less forum to educate the masses of newbies that they're overpriced and the c ratings are ridiculously overrated.

If if I ever win lotto I will correct the c rating situation. I'll invest in the equipment to test batteries, develop a testing standard and submit it to ISO. Even if it doesn't get an ISO, I'll test cells/packs and post the results on a website. RC magazines probably won't let me advertise the site in their mags because every manufacturer will hate me but hopefully it'll force them to change.

RustyUs

I remember back in the day when buying matched 1400mah~1600mah NiCd SCR cells @ $50, $60, or even spending more on a 6 cell pack of batteries with "numbers" on each cell.

Having actual specs of each LiPo cell would be great. That is of course the numbers not being fudged.