AIO vs Stack for FPV drones: current, cells, weight and repairability. Based on 300+ real AIO boards and 250+ stacks. Which one fits your drone size.
AIO and stack do the same job: run the flight controller and drive the motors. What changes is how it's split. An AIO puts the flight controller and all four ESCs on a single board; a stack separates them into two boards bolted on top of each other. These figures come from the 300+ AIO boards and 250+ stacks in the FPVBuilder catalogue, not from an estimate.
An AIO (all-in-one) carries the flight controller and all four ESCs on the same board. A stack is two separate boards, the FC and the 4-in-1 ESC, bolted together with standoffs. Electrically they do the same thing; what changes is the space they take and what happens when something fails.
In the catalogue, AIO boards average 32 A and reach 4.6S; stacks average 48.7 A and 5.7S. It's not that an AIO can't handle a 5 inch (there are AIOs up to 80 A), it's that most are designed for smaller drones. If your motor draws high peaks on 6S, a stack has more headroom and sheds heat better because the boards are separated.
This is the difference you feel in your wallet. In a hard crash or a short, an ESC usually goes. With a stack you replace just that board. With an AIO you replace everything, flight controller included, even if the flight side was perfectly fine. That's why many people accept the extra grams of a stack on drones that crash often.
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