Research into synthetic polymer nanodiscs, structures that arise from amphipathic copolymers which capture membrane proteins and surrounding phospholipids into water soluble discs, has been applied towards the detergent free solubilisation and structural study of membrane proteins (MPs).[1-2] We have established the elementary polymer-lipid nanodisc forming ability of a novel class of amphipathic copolymer comprised of an alternating sequence of N-alkyl functionalised maleimide (AlkylM) with systematically varied hydrocarbon chain length from n-propyl (PM) to s-butyl (IBM) to n-butyl (BM), and hydrophilic cationic N-methyl-4-vinyl pyridinium iodide (MVP). The size range and extraction efficiency of such polymer-lipid nanodiscs was demonstrated to be dependent on the hydrophobicity of the N-alkyl maleimide substituent with the most hydrophobic n-butyl derivative showing superior lipid extraction and resulting in DMPC lipid containing nanodiscs of the smallest size (12.5 nm) using a 0.2:1 polymer: lipid ratio. Furthermore, MVP-co-BM and MVP-co-IBM have been shown to solubilise A2a GPCRs expressed in native Sf9 insect cell membranes in a manner which mirrors the preestablished trend between increased polymer hydrophobicity and higher nanodisc yield according to densitometric analysis of western blot data. MVP-co-AlkylM nanodiscs have shown comparable extraction efficiency to styrene maleic acid (SMA), the original and most widely adopted polymer nanodisc material whilst also showing a broader tolerance to the presence of divalent cations (i.e. Ca2+) which induce SMA precipitation. This new nanodisc material holds promise as an addition to the structural biologist’s toolbox for characterising native state membrane proteins.