Originally Posted by thzero

Since basically the only cells you can buy are either Chinese or Korean, just about everyone gets their cells from Chinese.

However, Venom has long be known to be a re-brander. They buy products from Chinese companies (its also called white boxing) and rebadge it as their own. Its not necessarily a 'bad practice', especially if they have stand behind their products with some sort of service and/or support. Now they've been doing that for quite some time, but they seem to also be starting to produce some of their own products from scratch too; i.e. the Gambler.

However, I do have a Venom battery, its held up as a bash battery for quite some time, but it was also bought when there weren't a lot of other options. I also had, when new to LiPo, a 'Venom charger'. This was a Chinese version of another, and really much better Chinese built charger, and it has ZERO DOCUMENTATION WITH IT. I sent Venom an email to their support asking for documentation and/or information about some of the features. They had not a clue either.

The practice of 'white boxing' has been going for 20+ years. There are only a handful of companies that make a lot of things (especially in electronics - such as lcd screens) because of the high level of specialization needed (its not like making ice cream); these usually get made at different price points and with different features depending on the end client. Their clients are the ones who 'consumerize' them for the mass market.

To circle this back around. CC makes a quality product, and a competitive price. Tekin, although usually a tad more expensive than CC, does so too. And Novak, well opinions differ, but still they for the most part do too.

Batteries seem to run to the extreme; you get the stuff direct from HongKong thats ultra-cheap, you get the stuff from say US or European based such as MaxAmps thats crap marked up really high, or you get high end product that is not cheap (but usually cheaper than maxcrap) such as Hyperion (out of HK mind you), ThunderPower (LV, NV), etc.

The biggest problem is that unlike with NiCd and NiMH batteries, no one is telling us exactly WHO the manufacturer of the cells are and what the exact specs of each cell is. So in reality, other than measuring and testing each cells, you really don't know that anyone isn't selling a crap lipo for a large markup.