LiPo Battle: Tattu, Dinogy, Drone Lab 4S Batteries

by Oscar

Today we are testing 2 new LiPo batteries for racing mini quad, the Tattu and Dinogy. We will also compare the performance against the Drone Labs in our flight test.

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Some might say it’s not fair or relevant to compare a 1500mah with a 1300mah. But I say it’s totally relevant in this case. If someone was going to buy some lipo today, considering these batteries are all very similar size/weight/price, they are all good for a 210 or 180 mini quad. The Dinogy is only less than 10g lighter than the Drone Lab.

Tattu 4S 45C 1550mAh LiPo

Thanks to Gens Ace Tattu for sending me the Tattu LiPo for testing.

This is the heaviest battery of all three we are testing, probably due to the extra capacity and length of the discharging lead.

tattu-lipo-4s-1550mah-45c-battery-testing

Tattu batteries have a very wide distribution, and the high availability makes Tattu one of the most used LiPo brand out there.

  • Price: $31
  • Weight: 178g
  • Size: 72 x 36.5 x 33.0mm

Dinogy 4S 65C 1300mAh LiPo

Thanks to FirstPersonView.co.uk for sending me the Dinogy LiPo for testing.

dinogy-lipo-battery-4s-1300mah-65c

Light weight LiPo.

  • Price: $29
  • Weight: 150g
  • Size: 20 x 35 x 69mm

Drone Lab 4S 50C 1500mAh LiPo

I first reviewed and started using this LiPo back in 2015 and I was well impressed with the performance.

tattu-dinogy-drone-lab-lipo-battery-comparison

Similar size to the Tattu, but significantly lighter, it’s actually close to the Dinogy in terms of weight. It’s also the cheapest of all 3 batteries.

  • Price: $24
  • Weight: 157g
  • Size: 75 x 33 x 30mm

Result and Comparison

The test was carried out in this simple course, simulating what it’s like in a real race.

There are 2 parts of the course that requires 100% throttle to show the discharging performance of the LiPo, and the voltage and current are recorded (red stars).

Right after these full throttle punch outs, there is a long slower pace cruise at 40% throttle, data is also recorded at the end of this straight line to see how well the battery voltage recovers.

I flew at least 4 laps on each battery.

lipo-test-course

C Rating and Voltage Sag

One of the most important aspects when choosing LiPo battery, is to look at what the maximum discharge current is. If you discharge more current than the LiPo can handle, you will start to get voltage sag (big drop in voltage level).

C rating is supposed to indicate the maximum discharge current:

maximum discharge current = C-rating * battery Capacity

However not every battery manufacturer/marketer tells the truth, it’s not uncommon that C rating is over-stated.

From the spec of the three batteries we are testing:

  • Tattu: 1550mAh * 45C = 69.75A
  • Dinogy: 1300mAh * 65C = 84.5A
  • Drone Lab: 1500mAh * 50C = 75A

My quadcopter draws about 70A to 75A of current at full throttle, and from this calculation, I would expect to see the Dinogy battery to have the least voltage sag, but quite the opposite in my testing. voltage sag is the worse in all 4 laps, and it got worse toward the 4th lap.

On the other hand, Tattu and Drone Lab performed similarly better in the test.

lipo-test-tattu-dinogy-voltage-lap

Power of Batteries

Another useful chart to look at is the power. If the LiPo can provide more power at each punch out consistently, your quad can reactive more quickly and out-race other quads. It’s a key factor to win a tight race :)

I really can’t tell which is better between Tattu and Drone Lab, they both have very close performance. The output power is very consistent through out the race in all 4 laps. However, the Dinogy didn’t do that well right from the beginning, and the power it provides also seemed to diminish toward the end.

lipo-test-tattu-dinogy-power-lap

Time Charts

I also plotted some more graphs of this test. The data is plotted every 5 seconds during the flights. Hopefully these charts can give you a better understanding of these batteries performance.

lipo-test-tattu-dinogy-voltage-time lipo-test-tattu-dinogy-capacity-remain-time

The interesting thing is that these batteries had close flight time (if I land when they reached their specified capacity). But note that when the Tattu and Drone Lab used up their specified capacity (1550mAh and 1500mAh), their votlages are still well above 14V, which means you can probably fly a bit longer (I normally land at 13.5V). Maybe they are slightly larger packs than specified by the package?

Conclusion

This is only a simple test, and the samples I tested doesn’t represent all the batteries of that brand and model. But anyway, from the data above I think I would stick with the Drone Lab and Tattu.

Not very impressed with the Dinogy. It costs just as much as the Tattu, but gives you less flight time and less power. Size and weight is not a huge difference.

Data Source

Data is from these DVR footage from my OSD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq5V6VxIyGw

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14 comments

Chris Romanek 19th December 2016 - 11:16 am

What’s the flight time on the tattu 1550mah more or less..
Is it any better then the 1300mah?

Reply
paul 1st November 2016 - 1:55 pm

total miscalc. there is no way to compare differant size batteries. of course the higher mah with show better in every respect. its just like having a higher c rating so to realy compare apples to apples you need exact weight and mah comparison no matter the c rating.

i would not take any of this as reliable info…

Reply
Oscar 1st November 2016 - 2:03 pm

You are a troll.
If not, read the post and comments again.
You totally missed the point here, the reason I am comparing them is because I want to prove if a 1500mah pack weights about the same as one 1300mah, there is no point of picking that 1300mah… not to mention it’s also cheaper.
C rating/capacity is one thing, you also need to look at the big picture, there are so much to choosing a good battery.

Reply
Christian 5th June 2016 - 8:19 pm

I love my dinogys. You definately have to cycle them to wake them up. charging out of the box and testing wont give good results….

Reply
Oscar 5th June 2016 - 10:01 pm

The pack i received was an used one (ran a few times previously).

Reply
Jon Alston 23rd May 2016 - 11:23 am

I’m a bit confused as to what happened in your test. It says that you crashed during the top right test which I’m guessing is the Dinogy one? Also the voltage vs time graph has dips at different places in the Dinogy one so it looks like you weren’t doing the same thing to it as the others. Maybe I’ve got these things wrong but it doesn’t look like a fair test to me.

Reply
Oscar 24th May 2016 - 11:57 am

one of the prop exploded mid air haha :)
It used 200mah right before it crashed (which was added back), but I took off again where it crashed, so there was about 10-20 seconds of delay after that.
then I did exactly the same thing as i had done with other batteries.

Reply
Jack 19th May 2016 - 12:48 am

I’ve seen quite a few of these battery tests, yet I have yet to see one include anything from Revolectrix. I haven’t used too many brands of batteries, but from those that I have I’ve found their high voltage 435blend to be the best.

Reply
Kaiyu Chen 17th May 2016 - 8:02 pm

Hello Dear Oscar:
I am a drone pilot from China. I make batteries and motors. Do you mind test mine? You will be impressed .
Kaiyu Chen

Reply
Henry Howeson 22nd May 2016 - 4:42 pm

Do you mind telling me what brand your batteries are?

Reply
Oscar 24th May 2016 - 10:43 am

what’s your website and contact email?

Reply
Michael 15th June 2016 - 5:17 pm

I am also curious about new developments. Do you have any specs?

Reply
Jan 17th May 2016 - 9:37 am

Is there a chance you will add Nanotech Turnigy (A-Spec/Graphene) to the comparison?

Reply
Alex 19th May 2016 - 5:37 pm

Yes please on the above. This is a nice way of presenting the data and the performance of different batteries.

Reply