How to Select the Best Drone Batteries

Contributed by Amit Lal

Battery plays an incredible role in a drone's life, and one of the highest performance type R/C batteries are the LiPo batteries.

These innovative batteries can be easily used for helis, planes, boats, multi-rotors, and R/C cars. You need to consider many specifications and features related to batteries before purchasing a new one.

If you are looking for a standard quality battery for your drone, then the guide below can help you to follow the right directions to choose the best one.

Tips on How to Pick the Best Battery for Your Drone:

Battery Size: Battery size is an essential parameter for an excellent flight experience. You should choose a larger battery in terms of capacity so that it can serve your drone for a longer duration. The main purpose of a battery is to allow maximum flight time in the air, while it also depends on the drone's overall weight as with greater physical size, a supreme powerful battery will suffer in-flight time.

Similarly, a battery's physical capacity must be considered while choosing a battery for the drone. Before purchasing a new battery for your drone, always prefer to check your drone specifications.

Battery Voltage: Battery voltage is also considered as cell count, and it is an essential parameter for your investment. If you have batteries with a more excellent voltage rating, it will automatically help your drone motors to produce higher power. At the same time, increased voltage batteries use extra weight. Hence they directly increase the overall weight of your drone. In reality, you don't need to follow any golden rule for battery voltage selection, but you can analyze and make decisions via comparing data tables and efficiency. Many of you might have already observed that drone motors generally become powerful and capable when powered by greater voltage. However, you have to make proper adjustments to the battery's cost and weight. If you can understand how many motors your device will be using, you can analyze the current setup requirements.

Here is a vital thing to consider: If you are going to purchase new batteries, then always favor getting a product whose specifications perfectly suit specific voltage or current rating requirements. There is fewer number of motors that follow particular ratings for voltage and current of batteries.

Connectors: Connectors are a critical part of your drone batteries. They provide a straightforward way to connect and disconnect batteries from devices. It is effortless to different varieties of connectors in the market. Still, you have to pay more attention while selecting batteries as they must be cooperative with your drone model.

However, buyers can also select a connector of their favor and stick to it for excellent performance. Some of the most useful connectors products use Tplugs/Deans, EC3, and XT60 connectors with rare specifications. You will have to collect some information about your device compatibility and get suitable connectors with the correct specifications.

Discharge Rate: The discharge rate of a battery is usually considered a C rating. This rating helps users get information about the maximum current that a battery can discharge without harming itself. Although these characteristics often used to be unreliable yet they are considered suitable for quality measurement.

For instance, suppose you will purchase new batteries, and some brand provides batteries with 45 C and 65 C rating, then you must understand and choose the model as it can handle a much higher discharge rate than the 45C model.

Battery Capacity: The battery capacity is another yet one of the most important aspects as it helps users get information about how long a battery will supply power to the device. It is demonstrated by the mAh rating that implies "milliamp-hours," which means how many milliamps this battery will supply for one hour.

If you want to know about the period for which your drone will fly in the air with a specific battery unit, divide its mAh rating with an average current that is drowning in amps rating, and lastly, divide the answer by 1000. This particular calculation will help users gain a relative idea about how long their drone can stay in the air. Also, how long their battery can supply power to the associated drone unit.

However, to achieve this calculation, you must know the current rating of your mini quad. Always prefer to check its specification list to gain information about the current rating of the device. If you have a mini-quad, then you may have considered that its battery often fluctuates between 1000 mAh to 1800 mAh, and 1300 mAh use to be the most acceptable size.

It provides an effective balance between weight and power capability. Besides, the battery's capacity helps to know about its ability to deliver Amps, and it also gives a predictability factor of the maximum period for which the battery can supply power without getting discharged to the minimum storage capacity.

Brands offering batteries for the drone Before negotiating the price, you should look at the specifications of your drone. Besides, the brand also plays an incredible role while choosing a standard battery for your drone. As per our research, Hobbyking is rated as one of the best brands for quality batteries where you can buy at a reasonable price. Besides, you can also shop at Infinity & Revolectix to get suitable batteries for your drone.

Conclusion In this post, we have shared some of the essential points to keep in mind while choosing a drone battery. This guide will help you while selecting the batteries for your drone. Always choose the best battery for your drone as per different parameters. You can prefer a LiPo battery for your drone for better results.

Here are some of the best drone batteries: