[BrianG]

People seem to obsessed with how much the voltage drops under load. While perfectly valid for high current draw systems, it may not be as important for lighter systems where current is not so extreme (and therefore neither is voltage drop) and the user simply wants runtime. Sure, the less the votlage drops under load is closest to an electrically ideal cell, you're gonna pay for it. A racer who is concerned about having as much voltage with as little weight as possible is not the same person who wants max runtime for a pack that will simply fit into the location they have. The racer is gonna want just enough runtime to finish the race while being light weight. That will require a high C cell to supply the needed current for the relatively low-Ah pack. The other person will use a larger, heavier pack with greater Ah. But since the Ah is so high, the C rating can be lower to get high currents.

So, I think there ought to be a special graph plotting capacity vs. voltage drop under load vs price, etc for each category of cells. Something that would instantly show the relative value (or "bang for the buck") of each battery type - kinda like the scatter-type plots I've seen done for computer systems. One pack may not be the best performer as far as v_drop goes, but if the price and capacity are ok, it might be worth it to the individual.

Let's face it, there are a lot of newbs just getting into lipos and all these numbers can get confusing. After reading this thread, they may think they now "need" Flightpowers or whatever and that may not be necessarily true depending on the application.