Cheap VS Expensive Lithium Batteries

[spontanyus]

I’ve seen several posts from people that paid the extra money for higher end batteries and feel that it is well worth it. What I never see is a post from somebody that bought cheap batteries and did or did not regret it.
Does anyone have experience with buying cheaper batteries?

I found this battery from Walmart:
$150.69 MOSEWORTH 12V 100Ah Group 31 LiFePO4 Lithium Battery

And here is one from Battle Born:
$749.00 100Ah 12V LiFePO4 Deep Cycle Battery

That’s a factor of 5. Is the Battle Born battery 5 times better than the Walmart?

[Unplanned Tourist]

I'm no genius, but if I could buy 5 of something rated the same as another for 5 times the price, I'm sure the cheaper ones will last more than 1/5 the life.

So but 2 cheap ones and have 2 times the reserve, and if and when they go bad, buy 2 more. You'll still be ahead dollar wise.

Lithium batteries are dropping in price as new tech and production is evolving rapidly.

[NoviBill]

I put in a cheap set of Dr. Prepper 100 amp hour batteries last spring. So far they have been great, but they are essentially new.

Thus the challenge, like my roof coating - I will have a good answer on the quality in 3-5 years.

[TacomaJoe]

I bought the cheapest ($220) 100Ah that I could find on Amazon 2 years ago and it has been running on the tongue of my trailer just fine.

If I were to do it again, I would opt for a battery with a Bluetooth app that lets me see the cell voltages and lets me tweak the parameters like the three that I DIY'd.

[jdxnc]

I've been running a pair of 100ah LiTime batteries for 3 seasons now, everything has been perfect with them, zero complaints and solely boondocking with them.

[Tskadberg]

A good middle or the road is renogy it much more than Walmart

[PS89]

Walmart is not selling that battery, they're just the platform. It's being sold by a third party on the Walmart platform, same as if it was being sold on Amazon or eBay. Important distinction.

FWIW, I won't buy from the Chinese companies who are too cheap to get an English-speaking proofreader to go over their ad copy and labeling. That one falls into that category.

[Bnystrom]

There's a lot of low-end stuff on Amazon that people are all wound up about, but I wouldn't touch them. There's zero accountability for blatantly false advertising, at least until batteries start failing prematurely, at which point the "companies" that sold them will be long gone (many are just people slapping labels on the cheapest Chinese batteries they can find). I hope for the sake of the people buying them that they get good service life, but as the saying goes, "if it looks too good to be true, it is".

At the other end of the spectrum you have companies like Lithionics who may make the best quality batteries on the market, but at insane prices ($5000 for 320Ah). A step down from there is Battle Borrn, who makes reliable batteries, but they've oversized, overweight and overpriced. Victron is sort of in the same vein, high quality, but pricey and they use external BMSs, which complicates things a bit.

In between them and the sketchy stuff, are the batteries from SFK, SOK, Epoch and others, which are good quality, fully featured, completely serviceable, reasonably priced, have good warranties, and to my mind, are the sweet spot in the market. Some of them are assembled here in the US by American companies and all of them have been around for a while. That's where I've chosen to spend my money, but everyone has their own priorities and can make their own choices.

[Stircrazy1]

its getting to the point now that they are all using quality cells. take for example I can get a 304AH cell shipped over to the US for about 65 bucks a cell, 100AH cells are under 35 bucks so grade B cells are pretty much a thing of the past.

what is different though is the BMS different companies use.. this is where the failures are with most batteries, that haven't been abused.

there are several of the cheep companies that have had their batteries ripped apart on youtube to see the quality of the "guts" and a lot of the cheaper ones are actualy using good stuff now.

[dvspl]

I trust Will Prowse for battery recommendations. He actually tests the batteries and takes them apart to see how they're built. So if he recommends it, I think it's good enough. Here are his current recommendations: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/li...batteries.html

[Unplanned Tourist]

Originally Posted by dvspl

I trust Will Prowse for battery recommendations. He actually tests the batteries and takes them apart to see how they're built. So if he recommends it, I think it's good enough. Here are his current recommendations: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/li...batteries.html

So there you go, cheap AND good! I guess price isn't the only way to get good quality.

China really has stepped up, but sadly the people working in those factories are not living a good life.

[Cal Young]

The good folks over at the DIYsolar forum wonder how Battleborn is still in business. So over priced. Most LiFePo4 battery prices have really come down to where it’s seems hard to justify lead anymore . That said, I chose a middle of the road 300ah battery with heating and Bluetooth (Epoch) for around $900. Only had it a year, but works perfectly.

[Mark_K5LXP]

In a past life I had to buy 18650 cells for a commercial product. Just to satisfy the project manager I sourced some "value priced" cells that ostensibly met the spec. They were spectacularly crappy - far from rated spec and many had catastrophic failure during qualification testing. That's not to say that maybe at this stage of the game the bargain batteries aren't using relatively decent seconds or high volume pedestrian cells that are consistent, but having no published data or any real accountability for performance, treat them as "you get what you get" and be happy with it. If they work for you, score, you win. If they don't, then you have your empirical data point of what not to do next time. I think that's also termed you pays your money and takes your chances. I wouldn't even count someone else's success or failure as meaningful, the one you get could be entirely different than the ones made a week earlier or a week later.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

[Soppy]

I have used power queen batteries for 3 yrs now and had no problems with them. I purchased 4 Eco Worthy 24 v 100ah batteries in the spring and they have been working flawlessly so far.