I was fortunate enough to recently purchase the latest 4S lithium battery from AoLithium during a black friday sale.
The battery arrived well packaged and only took 3 days from point of ordering to my UK address.
Impressions out the box were good. This is an upgraded version of their already popular 12V 100Ah battery. The initial version of the battery had a few minor flaws in that it's main terminals were recessed making connections difficult and you could only place 2 batteries in series and a maximum of 4 in parallel.
The new 4S version has addressed these issues and the terminals are now raised level with the battery case and you can now connect the battery in a 4S configuration for a 48V 100Ah system. It does not stop there! If you want to place four in parallel for a 12V 400Ah system, you can. Best of all is the fact you can place the batteries into a series & parallel configuration to give you a whopping 48V 400Ah system.
This battery makes use of a JBD battery management system and a Bluetooth 5.0 dongle giving it an excellent range for use with their APP.
The App is very user friendly and I had no issues installing on my android devices. It provides you will all the information you could ask for in a battery app, including some nice real time graphs!
The battery is not only using UL listed cells, it also boasts ISO9001/UL/CE/UKCA/Bluetooth BQB/UN38.3/SDS certifications.
At 23.15IIb's it isn't exactly light but for me is a reflection on the overall build quality, the BMS used and of course the cells weight.
The battery dimensions are 12.006.857.40 in making it an easy fit in vehicles.
When i opened the battery i was impressed by the thought that had gone into the construction. Everything was very well secured and can easily deal with the knocks and bumps of mobile use applications. The main connections from the battery make use of solid copper bars, nicely insulated and capable of carrying high currents with ease.
While the battery had no internal heating pad, this really isn't a set back as the battery has a low temperature charge disconnect meaning it will prevent the battery from charging should the temperature drop to freezing. As you may know, charging a frozen lithium battery will damage it severely.
While the lid can be removed easily, (it is secured by 4 screws) it is not really user serviceable as cells are laser welded. It would perhaps be an idea for the company to add a rubber gasket to the lid. This small improvement would make this battery water proof and would appeal to marine users.
While my capacity test failed to pull the stated 100Ah (I got 96.7Ah) I was not disappointed. The battery arrived with a voltage of 12.94V and I re-charged using a basic 15A battery charger as my victron IP22/30 was already in use. This only gave the battery a total of 13.35 volts somewhat short of the 14.6V i would have preferred. The manual also states that the battery needs to be cycled twice to ensure proper calibrations and I am confident i will get the 100Ah next time around.
you can watch the video here - https://youtu.be/acgDWsV035Q
In summary, this is a very good battery from AoLithium and it is clear they listen to consumer feedback and make constant improvements and upgrades to their offerings.
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Server Rack Battery UK
They also offer server rack battery systems which are also receiving favourable reviews.