If you’ve been in the market for a new lithium battery for a project recently you may have noticed listings online such as these:
Despite the obviously fake Samsung branding and the too-good-to-be-true price, these seemed like they might be decent for long-term use with low-power devices if they had even half the stated capacity. In other words, I figured they may be worth the asking price if you temper your expectations.
So I took the plunge and purchased the 9.8 Ah DC 1298A despite my reservations, and to my surprise initial impressions of the battery were good. It’s construction felt solid as if the cells were under slight compression, and the basic specs of the battery were listed right on the label, meaning I don’t have to dig around for a datasheet when I want to use it. Although strangely, the text at the top of the label says that it’s a lithium polymer battery, while the text at the bottom under the recycling symbol suggests that it’s a lithium ion battery – so which is it?
Regardless, I moved forward with testing using the DL24P 4-wire electronic load at a constant current of 0.5 A, and the results were less than stellar:
Draining the battery from a full charge (12.6 V) down to the minimum battery voltage (10.8 V) yielded a measly 2 Ah capacity. I knew I wouldn’t be getting 9.6 Ah, but I was hoping for at least half that! I decided to do some more digging, and sure enough others who’ve purchased this battery have opened them only to find small (most likely “recycled”) cells inside:
At least this explains my test results. It looks like whoever puts these things together did so by connecting three of whatever used lithium cells they had on hand in series, though the keen eyed will notice that there’s no BMS to balance or protect the cells, so don’t expect these batteries to last very long in regular use.
While it’s possible that there are legitimate, visually identical versions of this battery floating around online at a more realistic price (which tends to be the case with products like these) I still can’t recommend these batteries simply because you just never know what you’re going to get.