The name “Cobra 2204” have been mentioned so many times on many forums and discussion boards when people are discussing motors for small size multicopters, for example the 250mm Mini-H quad and the 290mm Spider hexacopter. Therefore I decided to give this motor a try too.

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I really like these motors, they are efficient, and smooth. I use them on my mini quad, it weights 650 gram overall, and I use 4S battery with them. They only get a bit warm after a whole flight.

One problem I can see is the M5 prop adapter, they use grub screws (screws on both sides). I personally don’t think this is the best adapter for this motor, because it’s a bit too powerful. I have already lost two prop adapters after hard crashes (just gone missing). I like the Sunnysky and Tiger motors’ prop adapters more, they have 3 screws goes in from above, which seem to be a lot of secure.

Getting Popular

For these mini multicopters with 3S, the most popular motors are the Tiger MN1806 and Sunnysky 2204. However many people wanted more power and stepped up to the 4S battaries. These motors are not meant to run on 4S, so they tried the cobra 2204 1960KV motors. The result turned out to be very good. Suddenly it’s one of the most popular motor for small copters, and it just went out of stock everywhere.

Talking about power, it’s really amazing that the Cobra 2204 motor can generate more than 500g of thrust max with 4 cell battaries (5030 props), given the size of these motors.

Someone on RC group did a test and found the Cobra 2204/32 1960kv motors can achieve as high as 83% efficiency compared to 60% from some other similar price and spec motors, under the same condition. Data quoted from here. Check out the data table.

Green version? Black version?

These are the same motor, but some have green bottom and some black. Cobra 2204 motors have the standard 16×19 mm mounting patern. The thread is M2. Supplied in the box are M2x5mm bolts.

The green ones are the original version, designed for general purposes. They come with just a O-ring prop adapter and they have a motor sitting plate sticks out (the 4 tabs).

The black version are the newer batch and doesn’t have the 4 tabs at the bottom anymore. Supposedly it is designed for multicopters (since they have “multicopter” printed on their label), and they come with the bolt-on M5 prop adapter.

Anyway both have the same specification. There is also the 2300KV version for 3S and under.

Blue Liquid?

It comes with some blue liquid in a bottle, it’s the loctite glue. Check out this post about loctite glue. It basically helps securing the screws.

Replacement Prop Adapter

It happened to me that in a crash my prop adapter just popped, and disappeared. There is no official source of prop adapter replacement, so I went looking for cheap alternatives. Luckily on the hobbyking site they sell them and they are “Prop Adapter – Nut M5x3mm shaft”.

Spec Testing Data

Update (10/07/2015) here is the latest test data with various propellers.

These tests were done with a kitchen scale and OSD current sensor, so it’s not 100% accurate. It also differs from motor to motor. If in doubt, please run your own testing, below data is only for my own reference.