ASK Cubby, A Weekly Q & A Session, Version 05.06.2010

“Dear Brian,
First let me take the time to say, I really enjoyed the two battery shootouts. They were well written and I think by the second one you really have it nailed down with good testing criteria for each battery and being able to replicate situations so the testing for each is equal. One thing that really kind of bummed me out was that you DIDN’T test the Max Amps batteries. I know you stated in the article why you didn’t, however I just don’t think those were good enough reasons to leave them out of testing. Over time you’ve proved that your tests and product reviews are unbiased. I don’t think any of your readers would accuse you of being biased if they did well. I imagine that you guys didn’t want to include them because if they didn’t perform well that they may pull from being a sponsor. I know that’s a tough choice to make, but in the end, by NOT testing them, you may have done them an even bigger injustice because now people will run out and get the batteries that did well in your tests because they have hard evidence to base their purchase off of.
(continued…)
Ok, now I’m rambling lol but PLEASE include Max Amps in your next shootout and PLEASE do a Premium Battery Shootout so we can see if it really is worth buying one of these high priced, high mAh battery packs as opposed to the lesser 4000mAh and lower type of packs. Again, thank you for taking the time to read my email and take it into consideration. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.

Sincerely,
Scott K”
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I’ve omitted a large part of the email just to shorten it down a bit for our readers, and while it was addressed to our editor Brian, I think it makes a good “ASK Cubby” email.

First off, thanks for the props Scott, they are few and far between. Now to get to the crux of your email. Having a MaxAmps battery in one of our battery shootouts would be ratings gold. Out of all the emails we get, MaxAmps and Zippy are by far the two most requested brands that people want to see tested. MaxAmps is the biggest name in Lipo, and we’d love to see them in a future shootout. From speaking to the guys at MaxAmps, they put a tremendous amount of time into testing and building their batteries, and their reputation for customer service is a good one, all of which equals a great contender in a shootout. At BigSquid we have a great deal of respect for the crew at MaxAmps and we will not include them in a shootout without their permission. To the people that want to see MaxAmps in a shootout I would recommend giving them a call to let them know. They are good people there and I’m sure they’d like to hear your feedback.

The best thing about shootouts is that there are so many to do, many more than time allows. We’d like to do a 4S shootout for 8th scales, we’d like to do a shootout between sub $50 packs, and I’d especially like to see a shootout between former winners. 🙂

We’ve got lots of shootouts coming, with the next one being our charger shootout. It’s well underway and should be hitting the front page in about another week. Not only will we be testing how easy each charger is to use and it’s features, but also how long it takes to charge a pack (some are a LOT faster than others!) and the actual performance of the batteries afterwords. It should be groundbreaking and a good read.

Thanks for reading and submit your questions/comments and hate mail to cubby at BigSquidRC dot com!

YOUR Cub Reporter