PAG vs Anton / Bauer vs IDX vs Blueshape battery test video series

M

mikeshu

Well-known member
Hey Guys,

Just wanted to share a fun, totally unofficial battery test series we worked on with the help of EVS in Burbank. I actually ran a poll on here to choose which batteries were to be tested.

Some surprising (and in some cases not so surprising) results from these batteries.



More episodes coming! I hope you enjoy and that our sense of humor isn't too offensive!
 
Good show, I like the quality of the tests and the jokes are good too! Basically mythbusters but without the long pauses and commercial breaks/updates.
 
Great show, very funny too. A couple of comments, for clarification.
The elevated temperatures do not shorten the runtime of Lithion Ion batteries for a given single discharge. But it does wear them out fast, so the cycle life (charge/discharge) is going to be affected badly.
Every one of them has a temperature sensitive circuit breaker inside, for safety. They are set to pop to prevent a bad fire. Most likely the one that activated (Blue Shape?) was set to a slightly lower degrees threshold then the others. It does not mean it is a lesser quality battery, just a little more sensitive.
How fast a battery is taking charge depends not so much on the battery itself, but on how much horsepower is in the charger.
Cheers :-)
 
Very entertaining! :)

One point worth noting is that the stacking ability (being able to parallel two batteries up) can be very, very useful. The PAGs certainly do it, but I'm not sure about the others? (I thought IDX did such quite a while ago, but the IDX battery shown didn't look like it could?)

It's especially the case now with the Li-Ion restrictions on airline baggage. The PAGs meet the criteria for carry on (<100Wh), but docking two together gives double the capacity and double the max current capability. Very useful if you have a power hungry camera and/or lots of accessories.

It can also be good to normally run with just a single battery (and keep total weight down), but just clip on a second if you're using extra power - on-camera lights or radiocam transmitter for example.
 
Bern Caughey said:
"PAGlink Battery System"
by Alister Chapman

http://www.xdcam-user.com/2015/06/pag-paglink-battery-system/
Click to expand...
Good link, and I agree with all of that - and although my main client uses new PAG batteries (my own are the older non-stackable type) I wasn't aware of the micro-charger he mentions. The stackability therefore has a charging advantage in addition to capacity and max current drain!

I'm just surprised the IDX batteries shown in the video aren't stackable - the first such camera batteries I saw were IDX I'm sure....?
 
Thanks for watching, guys, and for the comments across the board! There was SOOOO much that I wanted to talk about each brand and each individual model type, but I wanted to keep these videos as short and sweet as possible. We actually shortened it down a decent amount.

Part of what was cut out was discussion of the aforementioned stickability feature in charging and usage of PAG, which only brief mention of it is made in the final cut.

As far as the stackable IDX models, YES, there are stackable models, but I stuck with the baseline models for each product line. I actually previously owned these IDX batteries but in the Power Brick variety made for steadicam, so I was personally curious how they performed compared to these other models.

And YES, Adolgin, the charging time really depends on the specs of the charger. This was something that we considered getting into for the episode, and even swapping the batteries between different brand chargers (which generally manufacturers don't recommend), but hell, charging batteries in 16 combinations would drive us crazy, so we wanted to keep it simple and just stuck with the baseline brand chargers to show.

Great insight on the effects of heat too. As we can see, it did affect runtime, but for all we know, this could be the circuitry smartly adjusting output for safety reasons. But it was really interesting just to do something crazy like this and see which one did best.

The third episode is a bit delayed due to all the holiday insanity, but it will be an appropriate one for winter, as it't the COLD TEST!
 
mikeshu said:
....... I wanted to keep these videos as short and sweet as possible. We actually shortened it down a decent amount.

Part of what was cut out was discussion of the aforementioned stickability feature in charging and usage of PAG, .....
Click to expand...

But part of your results give a cost/minute breakdown for run time. Point is that PAG do stackable and non-stackable versions of what I believe is otherwise the same battery, the stackable ones being about 30% more expensive than non-stackable? So why not use the latter, to make it a more like for like comparison? The run time is going to be the same - but the cost/min will be far less than you say.

mikeshu said:
As far as the stackable IDX models, YES, there are stackable models, but I stuck with the baseline models for each product line.
Click to expand...
But... you didn't! Not for PAG anyway!

PAGs baseline (non-stackable) battery is the L96, the stackable version is the PL96. See https://www.paguk.com/catalog/4

The ones you tested were nearly 30% more expensive than their baseline product. Which hardly seems fair? And when the extra money is going to pay for the stackability feature (the batteries otherwise the same), doesn't that then deserve a mention to explain the price premium?
 
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Very good points, hard drive.

I suppose "baseline" can be a misnomer in this sense, since different manufacturers all have different model/feature/price structures. I suppose the better way of saying it would be the most "common" or "popular" model that our industry friends asked us about testing (and then trying to find all the competitors at the same Wh). Honestly, PAGlink was almost nixed from the lineup because of its price, capacity, and stackability being an outlier (other than IDX being stackable), but there were enough praises sung to throw it into the mix.

And yes, what you're paying for is the stacking feature, and just one or two lines mentioning that feature remain in our video. As mentioned, there was a long section that was snipped out that focused on P-tap ports, power indicators, yes stackability etc. that, although very important in my mind, became a zzzzzz-fest. I will definitely keep this feedback in mind for future episodes... and when we actually have a budget to make this more TV episode length :-P

***whispering* Which reminds me, since we don't exactly make money off of these, please like and subscribe so we can make more of these and make them better!
 
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