ACE 3S 2250mah 25C Lipo - Discussion & Review

[PerlAddict]

I received my ACE 3S 2250mah 25C lipo review pack via UPS from Mr. Ling at "ACE Racing Battery" today, who was kind enough to send out a sample for testing and comparison.

From previous reviews I have read, ACE has made some well received hard-cased racing batteries. This is one of their first forays into lipos geared towards electric flight. It is encased in a softer, shrink-wrap style covering, which is lighter than hard-cased batteries and is what most of us are used to for electric flight.

The lipo arrived well-packaged. It was wrapped in bubble packaging inside of a nicely printed box, which was also very securely wrapped in bubble packaging around the outside of it. Unfortunately, I left my scale and other lipos at the office today, so I'll have to edit in the weight and size comparison to some other brands tomorrow.

The dimensions of the battery are approximately 105mm long x 35mm wide x 25mm tall. The shrink wrap completely covers the cells on all sides and the pack is thin enough that I don't believe there is any sort of spacers in between the cells. If you need a compact battery, this can be a very good thing. If your plane tends to get very hot in the battery compartment, you'll want to make sure you find a way to provide some airflow to cool this battery during flight, most likely. It came with a Deans-style connector pre-soldered onto it. The balance tap is a JST-XH plug (same as Align/E-Flite/Zippy, etc.).

I promptly placed it on my CellPro 10S charger with a charge setting of "Accurate Charge" and a charge rate of 1C. You couldn't ask for a battery to arrive with much better of a storage voltage. It read as 50% charged with an individual cell voltage of 3.873 on all three cells. After it completed its first charging cycle, the voltage read 4.195 per cell. It took 29 mins and 42 secs to complete the charge, and put 879mah into the pack.

I'll compare the static performance numbers tomorrow on a stock Phase3 F-16 power system, and then on a CustomCDR Triple EDF motor, 60A ESC, and 5-bladed Alfa fan.
- Dave

[Grasshopper]

Well,

Dave beat me to it. I received two packs (because I'm special). Both packs had the same measurements as Dave posted above on his and weigh in at 180 grams (6.2 ounces) each. All cells read 3.86 volts on my Common Sense charger.

These packs are very flat and squared off. They are smaller in size than my Tenergy 3S 2100 25C packs, my G Force 3S 2250 20C packs and my Zippy H 3S 2200 25C packs. They are 10 grams lighter than the Zippy H and G force packs and 5 grams heavier than the Tenergy packs.

They are both balance charging on my Common Sense balance chargers. I'm really anxious to see how they perform in the Phase 3 F-16 with the Don's wicked 4800 and in parallel in my Pulse XT 25e.

I won't post all my pictures since they look just like Dave's.

Edit: Both packs charged fine and all cells read 4.20 volts. Now they just need some air time.

[PerlAddict]

I'll post my parallel numbers from my Hyperion P-51D 25e as soon as Tom sends me one of his packs.

[Grasshopper]

It would be much easier for you to send the long unused P-51 to me before it gets eaten by termites.

[idealhobbies]

Curious... how was the internal resistance reading on the cellpro?

[PerlAddict]

I typically only charge through the balance connector for batteries than need less than 4A to charge. I'll run the battery down below 80% tomorrow and hook up the actual discharge leads so I can get an IR reading for you.

[Grasshopper]

I was able to hook up my watt meter to my F-16 and run 4 different packs. My F-16 has a Don's Wicked 4800 outrunner with a GWS 64mm 6 blade fan and a Pentium 40 amp ESC. The Ace Power by far looked better than the others, but I'm not sure I can say that this was a real equal test. The reason I say this is because the Ace Power batteries are brand new and the other packs have all been flown for a while. Regardless, here are the results I got.

Ace power 3S 2200 mAh 25C
12.55 V - 40 amps - 448 watts

Tenergy 3S 2200 mAh 25C
12.23 V - 29 amps - 290 watts

G Force 3S 2250 mAh 20C
12.40 V - 30 amps - 299 watts

Zippy H 3S 2200 mAh 25C
12.46 V - 29 amps - 290 watts

So you can see the Ace Power is dramatically higher than all the others but I don't know how much I can contribute to the other packs being older. I will say I can't ever remember seeing those kind of readings on my other packs when they were new. The real test will be to see how they do over time but right now, they look really good.

[bhatch21]

Tom, thanks for posting the test numbers. Can you clarify them for me. Are those intial voltage readings? Is that the max amp and max watt readings? Thanks.

[PerlAddict]

Thanks, Tom. I'm curious to know if that's initial readings or 30+ secs in, as well.

[Grasshopper]

The voltage readings are initial readings with no load. The amp and watt readings are at 15 seconds after start.

[SteveM732]

Originally Posted by Grasshopper

The voltage readings are initial readings with no load. The amp and watt readings are at 15 seconds after start.

So is it correct to say that the loaded voltages are 11.2 for the ACE pack and 10.0 volts for the other 3 packs?

[Grasshopper]

Just doing the math, it would come out that way. Unfortunately, I didn't record the actual readings. My watt meter doesn't hold a reading and it's a little tough to remember all the numbers while running the plane.

[max2112]

Hey gang, sorry for the delayed response.

My Ace battery was delivered yesterday. I have been pretty busy at work and such, so all I have done so far is some very preliminary inspections.

Here are the pics from the battery coming out of the shipping package. Mine came in a soft bag, but it was double wrapped in bubble wrap.



I got an EagleTree E-logger for my birthday and it is on the way. So when it arrives I will be able to give some real data.

Super good input so far Dave and Tom!
John

[mumblinaviator]

My two packs came yesterday. Nothing new to report. Packaging was superb and the overall first impression was of a well-built pack.

The weather stinks right now and I'm about to head home on leave for a few days, so a field report will have to wait.

Good luck to the rest of you!

[PerlAddict]

I didn't realize that two of you guys got two test packs. Nice work! I'm jealous.

I flew the ACE battery in my Sea Fury for its first flight yesterday. At first I was thinking, "Gee, this doesn't feel nearly as fast as I normally fly." But then I flew my Loong Max batteries and was no faster, and I realized that, 1) I had just flown an EDF jet before getting out the Sea Fury, and 2) I was coming in against a good 5 to 10 mph headwind.

I'm hoping I'll get a chance to doppler it on a windless day and see about getting some comparisons. Haven't gotten any watt readings yet, but I'll be able to check the IR on it compared to my other packs now that I've got a few run down below 80%.

[PerlAddict]

Here are some IR readings. I don't know what is considered "good," but the Ace pack with one discharge on it had a much better IR than my Loong Max pack, which probably has at least a dozen or two cycles on it. I wanted to test it compared to my ThunderPower 3S 2200mah 25C v2 pack, but I forgot to run the pack earlier this week and it still had a full charge.

Below are the ACE charge readings and graphs.

[PerlAddict]

And here are the results from the Loong Max 3S 2250mah 20C's charge.

[idealhobbies]

Thanks for the info Perl.

[PerlAddict]

Anytime. Care to clue me in on what a typical "good" IR reading is? I know it's a lot more important than C-ratings, but I don't know I should be shooting for. As soon as I drain my Thunder Power pack, I'm going to see how it compares, too.

[Grasshopper]

I have now way to give any scientific data on thes packs, but I flew both packs in the F-16 today and they were saweet! They were barely even warm when it came down after two 4 minute flights. All my other packs come down VERY warm after a 4 minute flight.

[SteveM732]

Originally Posted by Grasshopper

I have now way to give any scientific data on thes packs, but I flew both packs in the F-16 today and they were saweet! They were barely even warm when it came down after two 4 minute flights. All my other packs come down VERY warm after a 4 minute flight.

While a quantitative analysis is always nice, what really matters at the end of the day is how they perform in the air compared to your other packs.

The coolness is no doubt due to the lower internal resistance. It'll be interesting to see the change as measured by the Cellpro 10S and your comparisons of warmth after a flight.

Thanks for the info guys.

[idealhobbies]

On my brand new Zippy batteries, the resistance is around 4-5 ohms. The 3 ohms that yours has is great. I have 6 RC Car hard packs that were 7 ohms out of the box. They are wired differently, so I would assume that is the reason for the higher ohm reading.

I have 3 batteries that are bad. They read 25-30 ohms.

[PerlAddict]

Sweet. All I've ever known is "lower is better," but I have no idea how it equates to figuring a true C-rating or performance differences. I'm sure there's a math formula out there somewhere it could be plugged into.

Nice to know these sample packs are such high quality, though! Smaller than my other batteries, a little lighter, and lower IR and higher C-ratings to boot! I was worried about the lack of spacers between cells, but I suppose if your battery stays cool enough, it's a non-issue. I'd rather have a spacer-less pack that stayed cool than a pack with high IR that needed the spacers to keep from overheating.

Only thing that could have made these better would have been getting a second for parallel.

[Grasshopper]

I got to run these two packs in parallel in my Pulse XT today and I must say so far, I really like these. I got a 12 minute flight out of them and they were not even luke warm when it came in. I haven't had a chance the check the voltage on them yet. I'll post the readings later.

[Grasshopper]

So, has anyone else had a chance to use theirs yet?