Does LiPo Battery Break In Make A Difference | FINALLY A REAL ANSWER 

You need to do another round of testing to see if LiPo's are like plants and do better when you talk to them and give them positive reinforcement. :)

Joshua, I applaud your research effort's and your impressive knowledge in this hobby. I am a retired Air Force medical researcher, and I have learned a lot from you, many thanks. If you don't mind some advice from an old medical researcher, you need to eliminate as many variables as possible to attain greatest accuracy of your results. The biggest variable was clearly the discharge method, that has to be much more highly controlled or standardized. Obviously, you need more batteries to get more accurate results. What are your standard deviation calculations on your results? I'll bet these results fall within 1 to 2 standard deviation's which would be well within a margin of error. Thanks for all you do for this hobby Josh.

As adam savage says, the only difference between playing around and doing science is writing down the results.

I was hoping for more obvious differences, but fair enough. I wouldn't read much into the small differences. Ideally, for such a small effect, you need a bigger sample (5-10 batteries), and a statistical test (t-test, rank-sum). I hope it's possible in the future.

break-in seems to be waste of cycles considering that these packs have a finite amount of total cycles that they last. I think the flight temperature of batteries are more important because it effects the chemistry.

Looked like everything was within margin of error, so i'm not so quick to say it matters.

woo!! great timing!! Thanks for the hard work and thorough review

Thanks Joshua and Banggood. Always good to check your assumptions.

You are definitely the quad scientist! (Kind of a mad quad scientist!) I love your understanding and application of the scientific method. You always try to be aware of your biases and are the first to point out weakness in your studies. Love your content! Keep killing it!

I'm grateful for you RC guys. I use lipos for vaping, not driving/flying, but the same knowledge is very useful to me

Brilliant, I’d also like to see battery performance till end of life with broken in vs non broken in, great vid, thanks

Good test and even better reflections over the result. Thumbs up!

You have no idea how much you help the R/C hobby in it's whole not only drones!

I think to get a truely conclusive result would need to increase your sample size and then I would do a paired t-test (you can do this in excel) to determine if the differences in your results are statistically significant.

personally I only use Monster Cables for my wiring on my quads, gives them more amps and keeps the 1's and 0's in DShot more clearly defined. I'd use Audioquest but I reckon thats just snake oil.

excellent work. keep testing them batteries and see how they wear down after each 30 cycles.

Did you shake them during break-in?

Huge thanks for all the work on these battery testing videos Joshua. You did a great job of helping new folks avoid making terrible decisions about batteries. First and only pack I bought so far being the Tattu 1300 and I don't suppose the weight difference of the Infinity 1500's will be noticeable for a noob like me.

Wow, this May 2022 and I'm looking at a young JB, excellent advice partaked then as now 😀

The best reason to do cycle charge discharge on a new battery is you can see if there is a problem before the warranty runs out. Lot of us buy batteries let them lay around waiting to get a project done maybe test a motor, or setup servo's then by the time you fly it's 3-6 months down the road then you discover a bad cell in a battery warranties are long gone. As soon as I receive a new battery I solder the connector on, and cycle the battery 6-10 times on my charger while monitoring the cells set to storage charge and check it after a few weeks and each month.

I'd be interested to see how they performed after 200-300 cycles.

Very big of you, Bardwell. Cheers -

great job! i love your channel!

Or it could be all totally random :D Not trying to be smart Josh, just that we've got a heap of data on the HK Graphenes since that's what we use the most. We've got some packs failing after 6 months of hard punishment and a few packs that are still operating perfectly for 12 months on. Mind you we break in all our packs only because batteries cost so much!!

I've been running the 1500 lightning batteries for about 8 months now and they still perform quiet well. I definitely agree that are a great product at the price they run. I also just run them to fly freestyle, i don't normally do top speed or racing kinda things. I did not do any break ins so its good to see the difference is minimal. as for feeling a difference or sag in the batteries, out of 14 i haven't had any problems yet. Great video, always super informational. Thanks Josh!

Always learning something new! Thanks for this video!

Keep at it Josh, you've helped me along with many of your videos!!

What would be interesting to see is how they hold up over 100+ uses. A lot of us use our batteries till they die and I have packs that are still flying over 2 years of use. I could see the slight advantage shining in the long run. I hope you keep using these in the long run and continue to test them say every 30 cycles. I think things will get interesting around 120 cycles.

FYI, Wh is V x mAH, not V x A. A suggestion: make a CC (constant current) discharger with auto cutoff and timer. Watching one of your battery tests, the "60A" was moving all over as voltage dropped and timing was not accurate, two huge variables that should not be. CC circuits are pretty easy to make, i personally would you a hall sensor for the current measurement, but not mandatory. You also mention cooler batteries preform better, but in most cases that is opposite, also you might want to check temp before and after the test to see the delta. Thanks for the videos!

With results that close, beware the Placebo effect. I don't see enough of a difference to justify the effort.

did you shake em though is the real ?

You keep producing and I'll keep watching!

I'd like to see a C (your definition of C) discharge curve comparison between the two groups. Does the voltage sag? This would have much more important implications.

Makes me think that I will still simply fly my Lipos right out the box!! The marginal difference is NOT substantial enough to justify having to break them in, is this better in an argument...Nit picking, naaaaa. To each their own is what I say! When these results become more significant, then I will certainly change. For now though, the skies beckon, enjoy the flight ;) ;) ;) Thx Joshua for doing this testing, you are a star, good Sir!!

It's like ads for health products. "This product MAY help reduce weight. (When combined with regular exercise and a healthy diet.)"

Stopping on 3.78 - 3.8 V - is it normal for flying RCs? I think it's should be much closer to 3.2 V and 3.8 V is typical voltage for storage, not for fully used LiPo.

First, excellent test again Joshua! I think we all appreciate you taking the time. After your initial battery tests that determined the Infinity 1500 did so well and was only $25 I decided to buy a couple. After flying with them I immediately ordered 4 more. I've been meaning to give you some feedback but you fly them so you know. I think these batteries are the absolute best bang for the buck. There is so much power and it just keeps dishing out the amps till the battery is finally done. Thanks for saving me time and money!!

Great video : This vid certainly grabbed & kept my attention . Not only that but I'll even check those packs out if there in a reasonable price range I might even grab a few . Never can have to many lipos. Thanks again. another evening watching educational videos . Looking forward to the next one already.

Good Stuff Joshua, Very interesting episode!

Does it effect the longevity of the battery ? If your going through all this, why not take it 1 step more ?

I learnt something today.. and subbed. Hello Joshua. : )

Fantastic tests. Self explanatory.

you do science so you are a scientist

Thanks for the testing... valuable info anyway you did it. I break in all my LIPO batteries but do it by not going below 3.8v new or above 4.10v the first few cycles (it's said some/most have a storage chemistry that needs to change) and would not call deep cycling them down to 3.5v when new beneficial at all based on a few mistakes I made that deep discharged a few but were still above 3.0v that lost capacity before the other batteries from the same batch kept above 3.6v and were broken in above 3.8v but who knows... it may be the Pauli effect as I have great luck with batteries;-) I think the main thing with LIPOs is you want to store them cold and dry to stop storage time loss, and stay in the middle around 3.8v as much as possible and keep the batteries cool by using a high enough C rating. Doing so is shown to at least double or triple the life of most lipos based on what I've studied but of course run time matters especially on quads that have short run times so have dropped low often and had great luck with the higher C Nanotechs taking a beating. Stopping the charge at 4.10v is where I'd stop if on a desert Island with limited supplies, but I charge my quad LIPO cells to 4.2v normally and aim for 3.7v without OSD as the min LVC knowing under load the voltage went lower. And on larger more expensive batteries 3.75v or above and just use a larger battery in planes to add airtime. Keeping the charge rate as low as possible by using multiple batteries instead so not in a hurry and the charge/discharge rate super low breaking them in seems to really work well and can say the batteries definitely balance better. If I screw up on one going too low I can remember which one just by watching it charge. Cells are seldom equal new but you can make them behave as if they are using a good charger with a low C slow balance charge and discharge cycle the first 5 charges where the first 3 seem the most important to get the cells ready for use.

I think another factor that was left out which I think is very important is weight . A few grams of material can give an increase in mah . One more small factor as well would be room temperature . I'm thinking that may also influence the final test . Just my thoughts . . .

Nice job. I wonder if breaking would apply more with crappy batteries. That's what I seemed to notice from years ago. Nowadays the batteries we use seem to be less venerable to breaking in. I don't break in any more with a cycle charger, but I do fly a little softer on first couple flights.

great video.. now I have to go figure out what a means to break in a battery. Thanks! I learned something today.. i'm gonna go learn some more now! lol.

Sounds like calibration which is done for a protection circuit to recognize full capacity. It's not needed for performance most likely. More important is to get higher capacity, higher C rating at the lowest weight and volume. Didn't mean "C" rating since overdriving batteries can be potently dangerous due to overheating. Heard about cycle life charging/discharging - basically using Li-ion batteries at 20% to 80% of charge and charge it slowly for chemistry not to break down so quickly. It's most beneficial for power walls.

How to cook a Lipo ~fly hard & juice at high amps or high C rate ~heat up the battery beyond 80 F 27c ~fully charge to 4.26vdc ~fully drain to 3.1vdc Want to make Lipo in your smartphone, tablet, drone, toy, last longer, keep it cooler & 30-80% charged, never empty, never fully, avoid fast charing, only charge for brief time intervals, like plug your smartphone in for 10-40 min - never all night long // high heat & over charging & parking fully charged on the charger will radically shorten the life of the batteries if they are are common lithium cobalt oxide carbon lipos super common in all the devices listed above // especially drones

I suggest a combined methodology of battery shaking and break in.

I am curious about the overall useable life of the battery. Will a broken in battery last longer? I don't believe you will get more power out of a given battery without making physical changes. Is long term battery condition improved? Saving money on replacement batteries.

Excellent work but there is a lack for standard deviations. Regarding the number of battery tested (5 for each groups), if there is fluctuation in the results, the results could be not significants and the difference could be due to the random of data. If you want you can send me your data for statistical analysis.

This is another reason why your one of the most important people to this hobby . You should be bloody proud of all the work you do . Oh yeh and your hairy mate 😉

Just thinking out loud, there is strong focus on automated manufacture but automated and technologically supported research (and development) would be exponentially more beneficial. ESPECIALLY where lithium cell compounds (and their recyclability) are concerned. Take out the human variable.

What you say about battery break in not increasing mha is contrary to what I see. Every pack I get, when I start flying it, (1300mha) I can only run about 700mha before I am close to a dangerously low voltage and have to stop. Each time I fly it, (And I fly it gingerly until I see the amp hours come up to where it should be.) After about 5 or so flights, I start to see it where it should be. I can fly about 1000mha until I have to land, and that is pushing it. I usually bring it in when I hit about 900. Be every single brand new pack is like this. Not sure what you are doing that is not showing this. But I see it.

Joshua, thanks for your videos!

Nice vid as always! ^^, keep it up! Btw on the Lenovo plug he little middle pin is signal it's telling the computer that a charger has been plugged in :) if you remove it will power the computer but it won't charge it's going to say "non original charger" something along the lines ^^,

And now it's time for the RU-vid Peer Review in the comments!

All I ever do, is charge them, with a top balance with a voltage balancer. That ensures that all the cells are in the same state of charge, then, fly them. The batteries will "break in" as a part of normal cycling. It is important, to ensure, that a cell at a lower state of charge, doesn't get overly discharged, by the stronger cells. Another test, is to apply a variable load and variable charge and observe the voltage sag during discharge, and voltage rise during charge, to get an idea of the equivalent series resistance of the cells in a battery. To do this, I use either a constant current load, or constant current power supply, then have another resistor, that's switched in and out with a power transistor. By varying the load with a fixed value of resistance, I can measure the voltage drop or rise, and from that, calculate an equivalent series resistance of the cells. I just have to measure through the voltage balancing leads coming out of the battery.(I won't buy a battery that doesn't have wires to the cell connectors, allowing voltage balancing) It might be worth it to test the resistance after a break in, and see if the resistance is lower. The lower the resistance, the better the performance, the less heat. If all the cells have similar internal resistance, it'll fly. Lower ESR means better flight performance, capacity means longer flight time. I've mostly just run these tests, to see if it's a decent battery. I've never thought about "breaking in" a battery, beyond these tests.

More research on a given subject is never a bad thing. It gives more variables that contribute to the final conclusion.

I'm a little concerned with the Infinity with the production consistency... what i mean is that different batches will have quite different batteries... unlike ones from Tattu, Thunder Power, SMC, etc...

1300mha didn't show any consistent benefit,but 1500mha did consistantly.. correct..? what size battery's do you use consistantly?

Not sure if we can glean too much from this, looks like this is within margin of error.

is there a benefit of breaking in lipos after a few normal use cycles?

This is exactly the result to expect from breaking in lithium-ion cells. Not an increase in initial capacity (not sure where that came from) , but an increase in current sourcing ability and capacity over the life of the cell. There is legitimate research into this phenomena in scientific papers on the web. Here is a video /watch?v=pxP0Cu00sZs (long, but well worth the watch) that will help explain some of the concepts behind this. Its explaining a slightly different chemistry , but still applies to most Li-Ion cells. I'm really not sure why people have to question this stuff when the data is available with a few minutes of your time searching. This stuff is pretty well known in industry , however I will concede that the majority of the data is vaulted behind lab doors , but enough is out there.

2:18 WHY???? whats the reason for never discharging them below 3.8 volts?

I am kinda sad to see that there is no test on the cell voltage difference.

Good video. Thanks for the hard work and taking the time to do this.

Keep up the good work Josh.

So, in regards to Yuneec batteries 10/10 break in procedure..Is it charge/fly 10 minutes/10 times, or charge /fly 10 mins/ re-charge/and fly 10 mins till the end cycle. OR Chg/ fly 10 mins/ discharge /then charge and fly the remaining..and also what is the interval time between the 10/10 break-in rule?...Ive also done testing, but with only 4 batteries, 2 10/10 and 2 use up to the advertised flight time (25 min advertised ) ( actual 18 to 21).. The term for batteries on almost all drone always use "UP TO", what exactly does the term "UP TO" mean???

Joshua Bardwell I have a question about lipo charging and leaving them charged. everytime that i come home from flying i set my batteries in storage at 15.23volts. i find it very annoying to charge them only if im sure im going to fly. sometimes i just want to fly right away but i have to wait 2 hours before i have all my batteries charged. how do you do that? do you charge all your batteries and leave them so you can fly when you want to or do you do it like me and charge them only when you are sure that you are going to fly? is it a bad (dangerous) thing to leave them fully charged or am i doing it right and should i keep bringing them to storage voltage when im done? thanks for reading this i hope you have an answer to this. your video's are awesome and i learned a lot from you. thank you.

My biggest concern is that you let them know they were for a test. These are "Special" batteries. I (and my friends too) have bought many of these very same batteries and I test them all when received and I have never seen more than 1100mAh on the 1300 even when discharged at 400mA and after 10 cycles.

Im sure you could find a developer pretty cheaply to write some software to automate this test to make it a little more empirical. And the plus, im sure the dev would enjoy writing it, and not a boring test for you :)

OK........now how do they work at 60, 100, 150, 200 cycles? The manufacturer claim is the graphene battery's will hold up for x amount of cycles, so how well do they REALLY work? You already have a great start on both non and 5 cycle "broken in" that have 30 cycles on them, can you find the time to continue the work on testing?

Have you ever tried charging at lower c rate for first few cycles ? Like when reviving older lipo. I think its cause batteries were like balloons you had to stretch them before even first lipos but chemistry has changed a lot. You can put more power in this tanks but can crack them if too much put in or pulled out leading to failure

Hey JB have you ever done testing to seek quantifiable results illustrating the effect of high amp charge/discharge cycling to reduce IR? It's virtually commonplace for example in stock buggy racing to put a ~4000mah pack through a 40a discharge and 40a charge to get maximally low IR and the most punch out of the pack immediately before a 5 minute race. This seems to come surprisingly not so much at the cost of longevity but more so capacity. It subjectively works very well, and it does reduce IR noticeably according to my iCharger, but it would be really cool to see some real data on it. It's not safe according to standard lipo hygiene but a lot of these pro racers do this on the same battery for a year before they swap to a different battery. Just curious! Thanks for the content

I'm happy with the data resulting from your battery tests. Yes happy, or satisfied that is, with the study design and methods employed being absolutely appropriate in their context of teasing out elements of meaningful data. ( To be candid with you, I started to say that I'm happy the results are absent a level of contrast sufficient to compel my buy in to the "break in"

Thanks for the long term testing. I think your results are probably within your margin of error like you so correctly point out. I think what makes the biggest difference that no one talks about is charge rate. I charge all of my race packs at 1/2C, and I see a lot of guys charging at 2C-3C which I think is wrong. Might be a follow up test you could run on the same packs from Banggood. I certainly would like to see the results of that testing.

Cheers for your efforts on this JB. IMO that's such a small difference that it's not worth it. As of late I just charge to 4.2, discharge at low C to 3.5 and charge again, then I go spank them.

Do the not broken in batteries have same amount of cycles as broken in. Like used on quad a few times?

I would like to see you revisit this test with the new battery test machine.

Mine never get old... they mostly get damaged young

so the longest 60A burst for the 70C infinity was not even close to what you got in your original tests on this battery? It did seem like an outlier at the time.

dispelling FPV myths like a boss :) thanks, great job

one interesting thing to note is that the 1500 mAh batteries pretty much had the same stats at 0 cycles and at 30 cycles however the 1300 mAh batteries seem to be more degraded (especially in the # and longest burst metrics). Looks like the higher 90 C rating of the 1300 mAh battery only lasts 30 cycles or less then they more or less become the same as the 70 C rated batteries (if you compare burst time). I would be very interested to see what the stats look like after 60 and 90 cycles! :)

When I get a new lipo, I usually give them a few quick runs just to make sure I don't have a faulty battery. When you have a multirotor drawing 80amps, if there is a slight defect in the battery, then there is a possibility you could lose an aircraft never mind a battery. Although I've only heard a couple of stories of a new battery catching fire on first flight, just a few slow flights to give me the confidence I don't have a duff battery is enough for me. Not so much breaking in the battery, more for safety and to make sure the battery isn't duff.

What does it mean if a battery is broken in?

I break mine in, but not for the reasons listed here. I have noticed that new batteries are more difficult to charge, in other words, a new battery won't fully charge unless it's at a lower C rating. If I put it on a computer charger an cycle it 3-4 times, I find it's much easier to get a full charge at the manufacturers recommended C limit for charging.

Excellent experiment! Now that you have this data, it would be interesting to track these batteries over their lifetime to document how their performance falls off over time. I do not believe there is a good amount of information out there about how many cycles an average user can expect to get out of a battery before they should look at replacing it. For most "bashers", this may not matter much, but the racers and high-end performance community would probably benefit from having a rough idea of how many cycles they should expect before they start seeing a noticeable drop in performance.

good test are you going to see what happens after another 30 cycles or till there done to see how many cycles can you get out of them?

What does break in mean?

btw josh i have 3 of the 4s 1500 infinity and i found similar results as you did and love those packs .

I have some real world experience with LiPO break in with my RC car. When using a brand new battery I charged it with balance mode as I always do and ran the car until the car stopped on lipo cutoff. And when I connected the battery to the charger to charge it one cell was at 2.8v and the other at 3.8v, so one cell was not fully broken in or something. But after charging it 5 times and only running shorter times between charges the battery performed well and both cells have not been uneven after that when running to the cut off again. The battery was really in the dangerzone of being damaged but it have served 2 years at least so I was lucky that I have the lipo cutoff higher than default or it might have been worse. The charger reports internal resistance of both cells to be the same. So be aware that the break in effect can happen in different ways. After this happen I have seen it almost happen to another new battery and all new batteries I have bought since I have only run 20-50% and then balance again for the first ~5 charges.

Good Job! Thank you! Cheers!

I think lipos gain capacity with cycling, the positive results could be just more cycles, meaning eventually they should even out, longer testing would be cool!

Here is a thought... What if :the break" in procedure you did is actually calibrating the batteries. It would be interesting to see what happens if you take the "un-broken in" batteries and try to calibrate them.. Very cool contents btw. thanks for the videos.

interesting test. Statistically, 10 batteries isn't enough for a truly viable test. However, statistically, the tests do show that break in has no benefit. You would need much more variation to prove a benefit. You could also review the chemistry of Lipo batteries for the viewer (I am sure you already have) and show them how break in can't change capacity.

ah nice to know, i really have never found any difference between breaking the batteries in and just go out and fly

Do you think graphene batteries are worth buying over regular lipos?

Good work Mr Bardwell. How many cycles are you getting from batteries? For me more than 50 cycles is a bonus. Hopefully my Turnigy Graphenes will last hundreds of cycles (only up to about 30 so far).