Thanks for the info so far guys. For clarification by "best" batteries I'm not necessarily looking for cheapest. As with anything, I know some batteries are better quality than others but I don't really have enough experience with different battery brands to know which are "high quality" and which to avoid. My philosophy is EVERYTHING on the robot starts with the battery so why risk using anything less than the best quality. We all pay a lot of money per match to play in FRC and I have seen may teams loose many matches because of battery issues over the years. Why risk it with el cheapo batteries? I just don't know which on the list have the best reputation for quality.
We have always gotten our Enersys batteries from Portable Power Systems:
http://www.portablepower.com/12_volt...nesis_NP18-12B
I'm not saying at all that we are unhappy with the Enersys batteries and in the absence of info as to a better option I would likely buy more Enersys from PPS tomorrow if I had to. I'm just wanting more info from the collective FIRST community to make a more informed purchasing decision between now and whenever the time comes. I figure everyone would like the benefit of knowing what batteries seem good and what seem not so great. With a few thousand teams using probably tens of thousands of different batteries now there has to be some good and bad recommendations especially given how opinionated folks on CD can get.
So, I have one vote for MK from Allen so far...