We test the best rc car battery connector types and adapters and discuss the best rc connectors for beginners - XT60, XT90 , Deans, EC4 and IC3, wire and bullet, just compared. RC Battery Connectors at Amain - snp.link/3d0a3826
Switching over everything from Dean's to XT60. Even my existing batteries. I bought a bag of Amass XT60 connectors and I'm going to have a soldering party.
I did the same thing a few years ago. You will be thankful you had a soldering party, great move. As you know, Amass is the original inventor of the XT series and is by far the best! I too only use the Amass brand. Amazing how many knock offs there are today, the casing plastic in the knocks offs are harder and of lesser quality.
@@Benchmark67 Yes! I tried some Amazon "choice" simply for the price point... Whoops. While soldering as I'm accustomed to, I found that the cheaper brand failed and melted at the connection point in the center and the housing as well. I solder these with the male and female connected to help distribute heat.
I'm all-in on EC5, but it sounds like with Spektrum/Horizon moving to IC5 for smart stuff shouldn't become a problem for me because they're interchangeable. I can forego smart stuff in my LiPos! Just hope the 3rd party lipo mfrs don't stop offering EC5 items
EC5 is an easy choice. If you’re even somewhat knowledgeable in the hobby and know how to operate a charger, then save the money and go ec5 all the way
Good informative video like always! Thanks man! I did some reading a few years ago after rejoining the hobby and found the XT series to be the best based on their solid connection and how well they disperse the amperage load. 30,60, 90 and 150 seemed more fitting for the systems that I would run in anything from a 1/5th scale to an 1/12th. I've always found that the stock electronics are sub- par for the capabilities of the RC vehicles so I naturally replace them asap, so having 1 connector that matches everything has always been important. Especially out at the spot when you forgot to charge your spare and want to borrow one HAHA!
I loved Dean's plugs. Then I got the ec/ic then went to xt. Nothing is more reliable than the xt series plugs. They hold good plus they solder together super easy.
My XT60 usage came over from flying FPV race drones. I already had a lot of LiPo batteries with the connector on it, so I immediately cut the T connector off of my first RC car. soldered an XT60 on it. and it just continued from there.
I personally use EC8, and now, QS8 connectors. Those are 8mm connectors. They can handle much more current. 200Amps continues, and 400Amp burst. I mainly do bashing. But my batteries are much bigger. The biggest I own, are 9000mAh 4S Lipos for my Krzton 8S.
Connect & disconnect on the bench is very different from on the vehicle. I've flown helicopters for 30 years and deans/T style were always my go to. They always ended up becoming hard to disconnect do to arcing and burning especially on the machine. Be it a heli, plane or ground rc. When the xt60 hit the market several years back I went straight to them. Flatbar connector versus bullet?? I'll take the xt60 bullet connector! Great discussion man 👍
@@RCReviewChannel thank you for the reply 🙏 for me Deans and Tamiya are so 1980's and with today's electronics and batteries we need to move forward, even though I'm a old school guy some things need to be upgraded.
I use xt60 for my crawlers with small batteries. For my bashers which are mainly Arrma based I use EC5/IC5. I pay the extra for the smart connector on my esc as they are easier to solder and only a one time expense. Getting batteries for the bashers with EC5 isn’t hard. For the big cars the extra amps capacity with the EC5/IC5 over the xt90 is a bonus and I’m more likely to get a losi or other horizon hobbies vehicles and I’m ready for that. I feel like not changing the connector(s) on a new esc is best to make sure it works well before voiding the warranty. While most people will say no to adapters on the truck, I think that for a short amount of time for testing is ok. I hadn’t had any issues when doing that be don’t make it the final solution. Hurricane
Even though I switched over to XT's a few years ago since I have been buying a lot of Spectrum/HH products lately I have decided to also go with their IC3/5 connectors as well. I bought 2 of the Spektrum smart chargers to use with their batteries, Rx, ESC,Tx. In order to get the benefit of the telemetry. I don’t like having 2 charging systems but feel the benefit of the smart technology is worth it. When I think back several years ago I had a mess of adapters and 4 or 5 connector types so I guess having 2 now isn’t so bad. I Will see if I regret my decision.
Just getting back into the hobby after 20 years away. Back then I remember there was Tamiya, Dean's and bullets but some of us found a non rc hobby specific connector called Anderson Power Poles. They were better than anything else at the time and are non gendered so you never had to worry about if you had a male or female connector. I'm switching everything to those connectors again.
Problem was they literally disintegrated when exposed to certain chemicals like electric motor cleaner and they do eventually wear out similar to Dean’s plugs and would disconnect after a hard landing or impact so nothing is perfect their best selling point was price & modularity of the plug along with the whole no gender thing.
@@hondofourfivetwo9347 Never had any issues with Anderson Powerpoles, you can bend the connector if its to loose to tighen them up and they won't disconnect after hard lander. If they are not making a snapping sound when plugging them in, the connector inside needs to be adjusted. If your APP's were disintegrating when electric motor cleaner hit them, then you didn't get genuine anderson powerpoles. There are a lot of cheap rip-offs out there.
My Slash still has its Traxxas connector (the old one) and I put the red JST in the smaller scale crawlers. That red JST is good for the limited space but if I'm not paying attention, I could force it kinda easily in the wrong way and fry my stuff lol
I found that the XT60 is way too hard to pull apart and nothing to grip. Such a pain in the ass (or rather: fingers) to disconnect batteries etc. The IC3 and IC5 's are really fine in comparison.
I too was all about deans as that was the cats meow back in the day and it was way better than the molex connectors. Then I switched everything over to Traxxas for years and now I am switching everything over the XT series connectors and couldn’t be happier. Thank you for all the hard work you do on your channel I really appreciate it you teach me a lot. Much love brother.
I am changing my 6s esc to ec5 connector soon, caz I find that a lot of more powerful batteries like 4s to 6s are have ec5 or Ic5 connector now a day, also ec5 can be use on ic5, you just can't use the smart system, and some people are saying ec5 can be plug in to xt90, or xt90 can plug in to ec5, I am going to try it soon. If all this are true, using ec5 or xt90 is better, also some one on u tube already show, that ec3 can be connected to xt60 too.
I love your channel but your information on Deans connectors is completely wrong. What you said may hold true for generic Deans but the REAL Deans connectors are reliable, safe, and perfectly capable of handling similar Amp loads of any plug that uses 4.5mm - 5mm bullets. i.e. XT90/IC5/EC5 etc. Ive used them in my Kraton 8S and the only ones that have ever failed were the generic ones. The REAL Deans are even better now that theyve been re-designed for better amperage tolerances and higher temp plastic housings which also makes them easier to solder now too. Not that soldering them was hard in the first place.
Does this still apply today ? So far I only have 2 cars both Traxxas but I put a new esc in one and it has XT60 but I’m wanting the S2200 charger so I’m thinking about going to IC5 for everything. Good choice or no ?
I've got an xmaxx coming and the batteries i got for it have the ec5 connectors. If i cut the Traxxas connectors off I've heard it voids the warranty. Should i cut off the Traxxas connectors and put ec5 on it or is the xt90 that better where i should swap over. I have a couple high current ec5 to traxxas connectors coming but i don't think I'm gonna even use them. And i don't have a traxxas charger so putting traxxas connectors on the batteries isn't really an option.
Great connectors showdown Mister 👏🏼, I'm starting buggy racing so in this case the EC5 connector with a 120Amps is the best option I guess... I was going to install TX60 until this video. Nice info thanks 👍🏻
The spectrum g2 batteries with their connector and a spectrum smart charger is a killer setup. Not only that, but many top brands are using the spectrum components, so it seems like a no brainer. Connectors need to be standardized in the industry for sure. It's pretty obnoxious
I have three charger first is Hitec charger next is traxxas dual charger then I just got spektrum dual smart charger and I have a lot of REEDY Wolfpack LiPo because of my older models like Clod Buster and TL01 emax 3906 but I mostly use traxxas plugs but I use Spektrum radio and esc and motor so I don't know what way I should go
Thank you very much! You’ve done a great job. I was pretty confused about connectors prior to watching your video. It’s much clearer now. Good stuff 😊👍
I got into this hobby about a year ago and am totally a addict so I have accumulated quite a few cars. My local hobby shop is A-main hobby and being new to all this I didn't realize they like to shove Traxxas anything down your throat! So I have ended up with a ton of Traxxas batteries and 2 charger that are pieces of s***!! I got so pissed at these finiky sh*#boxes I ripped them out the wall and smashed them with my boots like a psycho until they were a million tiny pieces. So now I'm changing everything I own to xt60. Don't waist your money on Traxxas connectors and definitely not chargers. Listen to this guy, he's never sent me in the wrong direction.
I have 16 rc cars and share batteries between alot of them. would I be better off using an xt90, that way I am good if I am using a 3s battery in my stampede, UDR, Xmaxx or Losi LMT.
Deans absolutely suck! Back in the day, they were outrageously expensive. They are tiny, so no way to properly grip them to disconnect, you’ll be tugging on the wires weakening the connection. Soldering a deans plug is a huge pain the the ass. I don’t hate any connector other than the deans. I get mad just thinking about these connectors. Did I mention how much deans suck? Go with xt60, makes the hobby so much more enjoyable.
The reality is you may not be able to acquire the Traxxas connector you need and you're going to have to improvise. That's part of what this hobby is about and the other part is if you're smiling you're doing it correctly. Still the part I like best is forcing the pros and experts to do as I ask or get kicked to the curb. I'm fresh out of tolerance for them and I'm going after them with what you could call lemon laws. Shape up or get shipped out. MAGA
+1 for the XT series. nearly everything I have is XT-60 and XT-90. Simple cheap and can handle a good amperage load. XT-150's are the next step for the big 5th scale. much easier to add batteries in series.
im at a disadvantage. they are connectors. metal to metal, plug. why is one better than another? its still just a contact point. different materials should be the difference. a gold tamiya should not be any different than deans or just straight soldering. so what causes these differences?
I often wondered why large scale bashers "only" have XT90 connectors for their escs. With escs for 1/10 scale bashing and above rated at least 120A constant draw, is not EC5 9 ( or above such as XT150) the only "safe" choice?
Trucks ain't the only RC out there, if you are going to talk about general RC stuff, at least give boats & aircraft a thought, there's a lot of RC users who don't use 4 wheels.
I’ve been into RC for a long time and have a bunch of cars when I started out all I ran was LightSpeed connectors (aka Sermo’s power poles or Anderson…) they were priced similar to Dean’s but since they didn’t have a male or female 1 bulk bag could cover whatever you needed the housings could be configured in a couple different ways so you couldn’t mix up polarity or a motor and battery connection just watch what chemicals you exposed them to motor cleaner made them disintegrate. When I got hardcore into racing I built my batteries (yes built NiCad/NiMh packs) to use with 4mm bullet plugs I left for a while when I came back everything was Lipo and brushless I pretty much switched to Dean’s at that point but it didn’t last currently I’m running Dean’s on all my older stuff (anything 7.2V or 2S) where I still need a connector, for my crawlers (smaller 3s-4s batteries ) I’m using XT60’s and for my race stuff (bigger 2s-4s) I’m using 4mm/5mm bullet plugs with the majority of my bigger batteries being bullet plugs it’s easy to adapt them to whatever plug is needed for other vehicles too
Ive been using deans for a long time and ive never ever had any problems with deans how ever i have watches a lot of youtubers and they all use the xt plugs and every time they flip thier cars they come unplugged
In the 1980's I used Tamiya connectors now I am leaning towards XT60's for my 1/10 scale crawlers and XT30's for 1/16, 1/18 & 1/24. Very interesting vid Francis 👍🏴
Ahh you missed the XT150 😉 They can take 150A current and you don't need adapters to add batteries in series as you can split the connector plus and minus👍😃
@@RCReviewChannel after looking back 20 years, when I started in RC, those connectors have only been growing in size 😂 But so have the amps and current too. I have just switched to XT150 all the way around. Also to be future safe the next 10 years... I hope 😁 Thanks for your great channel, love to watch your review and get some lgc inspiration among others 👍😃
For once I disagree with u Francis. The ic5 are far and away the best connectors I’ve had and I’ve used them all. Easy to soldier, handle 120amps and stay together the best when bashing, the best connections. I know kev went to all these a few months back also for the same reasons. Also I bought a bag of 25 for about $50. That’s only $2 a connector. That’s not that expensive at all for what ur getting and eBay has them in stock a few places.
Thanks for this. I've needed to buy another Lipo and decided to purchase one with a xt60 factory fitted, so I'm taking the plunge and going to be soldering all my existing batteries and esc leads to xt60's.
@@RCReviewChannel I love the XT60’s. One of the skills I picked up last year during quarantine is soldering. The little well you add solder to and then tin your wires works perfectly. Now getting a JST soldered to it as well and then sliding the clip back over is a learned skill that takes a lot of practice. I’ve melted Tamiya plugs and smoked a Chinese made Deans but never a real Deans or XT60. The Hobbywing ESC’s are super easy to solder too with the terminals that have the bowls in them
I use xt60 for my crawlers and my 1/12 or smaller cars but for my bigger car/bashers/speed I use EC5 they are cheaper then the IC5 and fit with the IC5
I use the T-Plug type because I think it's easier and reduces the risk of being confused between + and - I've tried the banana type and an error occurred and caused my esc to short out
There's no best or worse battery connector, there's only adequate or inadequate connector. As long as it fits the amperage your system requires, it's just a mater of taste, except Dean and Traxxas, they are all bullet connectors in a more or less fancy package.
Brand new to RC been researching a lot lately as I bought 2 crawlers 1/10 from a family member and had some old batteries and kind of a combo of plugs between the 2 cars we bought, (Dean's and traxis.) Trying to determine what dual charger to buy, and then what plug. What charger would you do? Great video.
