When to charge Mavic Battery?

[Paul Dawson]

Hi guys,
Quick question...
At what stage should you let your main flight battery get down to before you recharge it?
Another way of asking is - should you ever recharge after only using say 30%, or is it better for the battery to be nearly fully discharged and then when cooled down, recharge?
Smokey

 

[BorisTheSpider]

Good to see you're thinking about letting it cool before charging - that's a real good practise.

Personally I'm happy to beat mine up by discharging to 20% or maybe even 15% at times, which is not egregiously abusive but it wouldn't do any harm at all to land at about 25% if you can and would probably eke out a bit more lifetime.

Main things are don't store them charged - I'd recommend changing the default 10 day auto discharge setting to something much more conservative like 1-3 days depending on your usage pattern, and don't charge them when they're hot unless you really need to.

 

[Cerberus]

Hi there, I can't speak for the others but for me, I flew my Bird near daily so I charge it after every flight..

But if I were to leave it for a few days without flying, I'll probably fly it some so the Batt is not at 100% and leave it as is until flight time again..

in which case, I'll charge it back to 100% and soar like a bird.. I like the idea that I have a full charge to fly to my hearts content and not worry about low battery ruining my fun...

 

[WheelzWorld]

I guess performance also decrease after 50% or so?

 

[HowSR]

Those are smart batteries. So the charge is being monitored and adjusted. Secondly, they're Lipo batteries. No memory effect like with nicad or other old-school batteries.
Thirdly they're 90 bucks.
Also, what counts is the charge to 100%. So charge it from 60 to 100 and it counts as one charge.

Or am I wrong?

 

[Paul Dawson]

Sorry - "don't store them charged"? - when I finish flying for the day, it has been my practice to recharge my 3 batteries fully when cool, so that they're ready to go the next time I go out. Are you saying that I shouldn't - but store them nearly empty and charge them just before flying..?

 

[Kestrel]

I fly mine till 30% and let them sit that way till I charge them the same day I go flying.

 

[BorisTheSpider]

LiPo batteries should be stored somewhere around 3.8v which corresponds to about 60% on the mavic.

By default, the batteries discharge themselves to 60% or thereabouts after 10 days. That's quite a long time - all the time a LiPo is sitting fully charged it's getting irreversibly damaged, but a few days isn't the end of the world.

It's also bad for them to store them deeply discharged, like 30% or less.

So best practise is, if you plan to fly in the next few days by all means charge them and keep them charged knowing it'll do a small bit of damage but it's really no big deal.

However if it's going to be a week or something, then charge them up to about 60% then the day before flying top them off to 100%.

The fact they auto discharge when idle makes this quite easy, but the default delay before auto discharging which is 10 days is a long time to keep a LiPo charged - DJI are happy to sell you more $100 batteries any time you like. My recommendation would be to change it to a couple of days, maybe 5 if you would rather trade some battery readiness for longevity, then you can charge them when you like and forget about them and they'll look after themselves by dropping down to storage voltage when you haven't used them for a few days.

If you want to be picky, if you know it'll be more than a couple of days until the next flight really you should charge them and manually take them of charge before they're full, when they're like 3 LEDs, so they go straight to storage voltage instead of being charged full then dropping back down.

 

[Kestrel]

LiPo batteries should be stored somewhere around 3.8v which corresponds to about 60% on the mavic.

By default, the batteries discharge themselves to 60% or thereabouts after 10 days. That's quite a long time - all the time a LiPo is sitting fully charged it's getting irreversibly damaged, but a few days isn't the end of the world.

It's also bad for them to store them deeply discharged, like 30% or less.

So best practise is, if you plan to fly in the next few days by all means charge them and keep them charged knowing it'll do a small bit of damage but it's really no big deal.

However if it's going to be a week or something, then charge them up to about 60% then the day before flying top them off to 100%.

The fact they auto discharge when idle makes this quite easy, but the default delay before auto discharging which is 10 days is a long time to keep a LiPo charged - DJI are happy to sell you more $100 batteries any time you like. My recommendation would be to change it to a couple of days, maybe 5 if you would rather trade some battery lifetime for longevity, then you can charge them when you like and forget about them and they'll look after themselves by dropping down to storage voltage when you haven't used them for a few days.

I've left my phantom batteries sit at 30% charge with no problems. It's when they get below 8% is when there are problems.

 

[larkin]

I have the same question but no one has answered your question yet.

To clarify, the question is if it's okay to fly for 5 minutes with 70% left and then recharge back to 100% or of it's more healthy for the battery to not recharge until it's run down lower, like to 25%.

 

[BorisTheSpider]

It's no problem to discharge from 70% to 25% but recharging from 70% to 100% will eventually wear them out - the last few percent of charge to full is not great for them.

 

[BorisTheSpider]

I've left my phantom batteries sit at 30% charge with no problems. It's when they get below 8% is when there are problems.

Thanks for the input, that's good to know - I suspect around 60% is ideal for storage but there's probably a wide acceptable range where not much damage is being done.

 

[DerekG]

When I'm not going to be flying for a few days I usually store them between 40-60% - I've done this with my P3P and almost two years later all 3 batteries are still working well / aren't swelling at all :]

I usually only charge them to 100% the day I'm going to be flying to reduce the time they sit at 100%

Same with the controller (as that uses a 2 cell LiPo battery) - I try to never store it at 100% (Even 85% is much better than 100% for storage)

 

[Paul Dawson]

Thanks very much guys - I'll change my practices right away. Appreciate all your input! [emoji3]

 

[Oingo Boingo]

The Golden rule with Lipo cells are the following. Dont drain the battery below 25 % at a PUSH ! Anything below 20% will cause long term damage to the cells inside the battery. Ive seen guys push batteries to 10%. Then 2 weeks later the same battery will hit 30 % and withing 5 seconds go from 30% to 15% ....

 

[Oingo Boingo]

Sorry wanted to add..... 35% is a accepted storage level for a lipo battery.... Never store fully charged. The mavic batteries do discharge automatically to a safe level

 

[amalia saputro]

Dji give advice to charge it when it reach 10%

 

[hackkk68]

I've left my phantom batteries sit at 30% charge with no problems. It's when they get below 8% is when there are problems.

Hi I'm the new comer°been flying mavic 2 zoom for bout a year and I thought by them being smart batteries you set to 2 day before discharge and no worries?

 

[Thomas B]

Hi I'm the new comer°been flying mavic 2 zoom for bout a year and I thought by them being smart batteries you set to 2 day before discharge and no worries?

You can’t set the discharge time anymore on the M2P or MZ..... but when they get to about 50% they will hold pretty steady for 3-4 months...

 

[hackkk68]

You can’t set the discharge time anymore on the M2P or MZ..... but when they get to about 50% they will hold pretty steady for 3-4 months...

Thanks