Is it better to almost exhaust your battery or leave 20 to 30% on it.

[Terry Coleman]

Is it better to almost exhaust your battery or leave 20 to 30% on it.

 

[Droning on and on...]

15-20%.

 

[Jeff A]

A quote "Before storage, please make sure that the remaining battery level is at least 60%. It is recommended to charge and discharge the battery once every three months to improve battery performance. If the battery level is below 60%, it is recommended to charge it until it is 60% before storage."

 

[old man mavic]

for me the lowest i would go would be 20% ,and then either charge them up to 60% for storage ,after they have cooled down, or if you were intending to fly within the next 24 hours, then give them a full charge so they are ready to go again

 

[mobilehomer]

I fly down to the RTH kicks in. Conditions always taken into consideration. If I am lapsing a sunset overhead, I go past that point. I let rhe battery cool, then charge to 100%.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

I’m OCD with regards to my batteries. I charge the morning of the flight, and typically land at 50 to 60%. Way overboard but I usually accomplish what I need in the flight time.

 

[EssenYVR]

It's best to keep batteries in the middle of their charge range, say 30% to 70%. It's a little less "good" to go outside that, say 20% to 80%. It's harder on them to go beyond that, say 10% to 90%. And it's hardest on them to cycle them from 0% to 100%.

That having been said, going close to 0% occasionally isn't the end of the world, especially if you recharge it promptly after flight. You can plan to land with 20 or 30% left, but if it goes below that on occasion I wouldn't sweat it too much. When the battery gets into the bottom third of the charge range my worries are much more about making it back to the home point than about battery health. A battery at the bottom of a river or inaccessible gully is a far worse outcome than one in your hands at 1%.

 

[maggior]

I fly mine down to about ~15%. My initial set of batteries with my MA2 degraded quite a bit (~90%) in the first year with some starting to bulge, which surprised me. I flew a lot, but not everyday or anything. When I was done, I'd charge them up to 100%. Many times, they'd discharge themselves to storage level and I'd have to charge them back up to 100% to fly.

With my second set of batteries, I got a charger that can charge them up to ~50%. My new routine is that I wait until the batteries are completely cooled off and charge them to 50%. When I know I'm going to fly, I charge some up to 100%. These batteries are maintaining their efficiency much better! Letting the batteries cool off completely before charging is really important to extending the life of the batteries.

 

[MROJAS]

Is it better to almost exhaust your battery or leave 20 to 30% on it.

Better to not completely deplete any Lithium battery. 20% remanent at landing is good and after flight recharge them to 55 to 65% for storage and you will always have healthy batteries.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Better to not completely deplete any Lithium battery. 20% remanent at landing is good and after flight recharge them to 55 to 65% for storage and you will always have healthy batteries.

Fellow pilots, while you can take it to 0% and it will likely be OK, understand that the battery "gas meter" is not a precision measurement of the state-of-charge, but rather a best-estimate calculation based on the battery voltage and load.

As cells naturally have some variation in internal resistance and other factors, it is possible to have a marginal but perfectly functional cell that, when the pack is pushed to depletion, gets there before the other cells, then is pushed a bit further causing damage.

It's playing chicken to take a lipo cell to a fully depleted state. While the exceptional DJI BMS will most likely protect you – it's monitoring the individual cell voltage of each cell in the pack – the risk is still not-insignificantly higher pushing things to empty.

Don't do it unless you have an emergency. @maggior outlines a very good strategy in post #8.

 

[EssenYVR]

My new routine is that I wait until the batteries are completely cooled off and charge them to 50%.

Charging when cool is a good idea. Another good idea is to use a slower charger. The 3-battery charger that I bought for my Mini 3 Pro batteries can take up to 30W from a suitable USB power brick, but if I'm not in a hurry then I use a 10W one because it's easier on the batteries. One of the features I like about the charger is that you can tell how fast the charger is by how quickly the sequential charge level lights come on one after another.

 

[DARKSeifer]

I always land at 15-20%, just before it starts beeping. DJI drones start beeping, autolanding and limit the power output to the motors when the battery is low, so if you are flying on windy conditions, and you get to the autolanding phase the amperage limitation (10% or so) will make the drone fly away.

Batteries degrade naturally and no one flyes enough to kill them by flying, specially now that drones fly 30+ minutes; for most people they just age and die. DJI batteries have a chip that manages them, you just need to cycle every now and then so they don't drop voltage too low.

I cycle my Mini 2 (still good even with the bug that prevented them from discharging if they were placed in the battery hub) and Avata batteries every now and then.

My 3 Mavic 3 batteries have around 170 cycles each one and are at 84% according to Airdata.

To maximize life land around 20%, charge slow, don't stress the drone while flying so the amperage remains low and cycle them every 3 months or so if you are not using them.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Charging when cool is a good idea. Another good idea is to use a slower charger. The 3-battery charger that I bought for my Mini 3 Pro batteries can take up to 30W from a suitable USB power brick, but if I'm not in a hurry then I use a 10W one because it's easier on the batteries. One of the features I like about the charger is that you can tell how fast the charger is by how quickly the sequential charge level lights come on one after another.

Slow charging is another excellent bit of advice, and as @EssenYVR states, we can easily affect this by getting a low power PD charger.

I find it very helpful to have a cable with a built-in power meter, and also to verify fast charging. These cables are notoriously inaccurate. The one brand I have found to have good accuracy is WOTOBE/WOTOBEUS – I have six, and all but one is accurate to ±1W. The bad one is, well, bad.

I got my first two on Amazon, then they became unavailable, and I got 4 more from AliExpress (for much less). Google to find these:

 

[EssenYVR]

Slow charging is another excellent bit of advice, and as @EssenYVR states, we can easily affect this by getting a low power PD charger.

...or, indeed, a non-PD charger. PD ("Power Delivery") is a newer USB standard that allows high speed charging, but it's backwards compatible with older, non-PD chargers. So an older, non-PD charger that charges more slowly will work just fine even with equipment like the Mini 3 and 4 battery chargers that are PD-compatible.

 

[1911tex]

A full charged battery in the drone or in the storage...will automatically delete to 60% in about 3 weeks. Not to create unnecessary anxiety.

 

[mavictk]

Let me address just one issue here. Whenever I want to charge a hot battery I put it into the charging station that is connected to the AC via a programmable plug and the AC is off. I then tell Alexa to turn on the drone charger in 30 minutes. I also tell Alexa to turn off the drone charger in three hours. I avoid charging a hot battery.