Marine Battery Comparisons
Marine
- Sponsor
- OPTIMA Batteries
- Location
- Glendale, WI
Beware of Affiliate Spammers!
You've clicked on a link or watched a video somewhere, trying to get some information on marine batteries that will help you make an informed purchase, but did that happen? Unfortunately, the answer is generally "not even close." Why is that? Because most of the people (or bots) creating these marine battery reviews are only interested in an affiliate commission. Click on their link to the battery they "reviewed" and they get a cut of that sale. Is anyone out there doing any reviews that are worthwhile?
Some of the most highly regarded online battery reviewers will physically tear down batteries and maybe perform a capacity test on individual cells in the battery. As insightful as that may be into how the batteries are constructed, tearing the battery down or testing individual cell capacity doesn't tell you much about how long the battery will last or how it will perform over the lifespan of the battery.
The worst of the affiliate reviewers will just regurgitate the information from the product listing and offer no information about how they've tested or used the battery. In many cases, they may have never even seen the products they are "reviewing" and will move on from reviewing marine batteries to cordless vacuum cleaners, portable ice makers and a host of other completely unrelated products. Others will declare "best" winners in a dozen different categories, which coincidentally coincide with a dozen of the best-selling batteries on a website offering affiliates a referral commission.
Does anyone actually offer any meaningful reviews that can help consumers pick one marine battery over another? We asked that question of our engineering group and their response was that it is very expensive and/or time consuming to do any really useful testing and most people doing the testing don't understand enough about how to test consistently to get results that are a true "apples to apples" comparisons.
What About Magazine Testing?
They felt that back in the days when magazines performed comparison tests, they at least had some knowledgeable tech editors who had some resources, but even they were limited. One example was an editor who wanted to test a group of batteries with a winch, to see which one had the most power in the practical application of winching the same vehicle over a specific distance. The tech editor reached out to our engineers and they gave him a list of parameters that needed to be controlled, to give the most accurate results possible.
Part of the concern was that if you used the same winch, it wouldn't perform the same on the tenth pull as it would on the first pull regardless of which batteries were being used. If you used the same winch, you'd also want to make sure the ambient air temperature and internal winch temperatures were as close to identical as possible for each test, which meant giving the winch plenty of time to cool down in between pulls. You couldn't use different winches on the same vehicle, because there may be some variation in the manufacturing process of winches, so one winch might perform slightly better than the other two.
Those parameters alone proved to be too much for the tech editors, so they did the best they could with the resources they had and explained the limitations of their testing and the caveat that their singular test may not offer any insight into how well the battery will perform over time or how long it will last.
Do Your Own Comparisons
All hope is not lost, just because it may be very difficult, if not impossible, to find someone who can offer any marine battery testing of any substance. As the manufacturer of marine batteries (not just a brand selling someone else's marine batteries), we have the time and resources to test a wide variety of marine batteries in the ways that would offer consumers great insight into which batteries are likely to be the best performers and last the longest. However, that information is proprietary and even if we did share it, would you trust the test results any battery manufacturer provides about their competition?
As both a battery manufacturer and battery brand, we can offer some easy ways any consumer can compare lithium battery brands. These comparisons may not be definitive, but they will definitely help you narrow your focus. The first thing you should look for in any lithium marine battery is an IP rating. It is unconscionable to us that anyone would offer any marine battery testing or comparisons and not indicate whether lithium marine batteries being tested had any protection against dust or water intrusion.
"IP" stands for "Ingress Protection" and is an international standard. If a battery has an IP rating of IP65, the first digit (6) means it is dust-tight and offers complete protection against dust, sand and other solid particles. The second digit (5) means the battery is protected against low-pressure water jets from any direction, such as light splashes or spray, but it is not fully waterproof or submersible.
A battery with an IP rating of IP67 will have a higher level of protection against water intrusion than an IP65 battery, meaning it can withstand immersion in water up to 1 meter deep (3.3 feet) for up to 30 minutes. Have you ever taken water over your bow or forgotten to put your drain plug in? Many boaters have had water in their bilge at some point and likely put their batteries in a scenario where IP67 protection is put to use. That should be a minimum standard for any lithium marine battery you are considering.
The second thing you should look for in any lithium marine battery is UL and IEC safety and performance standards. It's no secret that in their rush to be early to the market with a lithium marine battery, some brands didn't invest in third party testing for safety, performance and fire protection. Many lithium marine battery brands still lack these standards and you may have heard stories about the failures of some of these batteries. A reputable lithium marine battery manufacturer will pursue both UL and IEC certifications at both the cell level and the battery level to meet American Coast Guard, ABYC and international marine requirements.
UL, IEC and IP ratings are not inexpensive or easy to come by, so any battery manufacturer who has taken the time to pursue those certifications will make a point of calling them out in their product descriptions, specifications or sales literature. In essence, they won't be hard to find.
What could be hard to find is the third thing you should look for in any lithium marine battery- a physical address. Why is a physical address important when purchasing a lithium marine battery? Because it will give you a good idea of who you are dealing with in a market, where just about anyone can buy a dozen batteries off AliExpress, print some labels and create a lithium marine battery brand overnight.
At a bare minimum, a reputable lithium battery brand will have a dedicated physical commercial address with a sign out front, where they do business. We never thought this would be a deciding factor in a battery purchasing process, until we found a lithium automotive battery brand operating out of a rented storage unit about 30 minutes from our headquarters in Glendale, Wisconsin. That went about as well as you'd expect and a bunch of Lotus owners ended up with some very expensive paperweights. If the barber cutting your hair can afford a commercial location with a sign out front, so can the people selling lithium marine batteries.
When lithium marine batteries started hitting the market, we saw the same scenario repeat itself. Lithium marine battery brands were (and still are) being sold out of storage units, home addresses, rented UPS store mailboxes and third party logistics warehouses. History has proven time and again, that the individuals behind those lithium battery brands are not committed to being in the battery business. Is the guy selling lithium marine batteries out of his house saving money he would've spent on a commercial building to make sure his customer service center is fully staffed or is he running the customer service center through his cell phone, when he feels like answering it?
Is the lithium brand with the weird name shipping batteries from a generic warehouse also selling the same lithium batteries under other brand names, so they can walk away from a brand name that gets too many negative reviews, because they have no phone number and take three to five days to answer customer emails in broken English? If you are considering a lithium marine battery brand that is claiming 10,000 cycles or a ten-year warranty, have they even been in business long enough to cycle a battery 10,000 times (once a day for 27.39 years) and will they be around to honor their warranty ten years from now?
Speaking of battery warranties, you should take the time to read the terms and conditions of any lithium marine battery you are considering. That should seem like a no-brainer, but we've read the warranties of some batteries being marketed for marine use that have specific language, that will void the warranty if the battery gets wet. Not coincidentally, those lithium marine battery brands lack any IP rating. If you can't find a warranty to read, that's an even worse sign.
Conclusion
Taking into consideration those four factors, an IP rating, UL & IEC numbers, a physical address and a warranty that covers marine use, and you will find your options have narrowed significantly. The lithium marine battery brands that check all four boxes are far more likely to sell you a quality lithium marine battery and if there is an issue with it, they are far more likely to be available for warranty assistance. It's really that simple and you don't need to spend time watching videos from people chasing subscriber counts or affiliate sites hoping for a commission on your purchase.
You've clicked on a link or watched a video somewhere, trying to get some information on marine batteries that will help you make an informed purchase, but did that happen? Unfortunately, the answer is generally "not even close." Why is that? Because most of the people (or bots) creating these marine battery reviews are only interested in an affiliate commission. Click on their link to the battery they "reviewed" and they get a cut of that sale. Is anyone out there doing any reviews that are worthwhile?
Some of the most highly regarded online battery reviewers will physically tear down batteries and maybe perform a capacity test on individual cells in the battery. As insightful as that may be into how the batteries are constructed, tearing the battery down or testing individual cell capacity doesn't tell you much about how long the battery will last or how it will perform over the lifespan of the battery.
The worst of the affiliate reviewers will just regurgitate the information from the product listing and offer no information about how they've tested or used the battery. In many cases, they may have never even seen the products they are "reviewing" and will move on from reviewing marine batteries to cordless vacuum cleaners, portable ice makers and a host of other completely unrelated products. Others will declare "best" winners in a dozen different categories, which coincidentally coincide with a dozen of the best-selling batteries on a website offering affiliates a referral commission.
Does anyone actually offer any meaningful reviews that can help consumers pick one marine battery over another? We asked that question of our engineering group and their response was that it is very expensive and/or time consuming to do any really useful testing and most people doing the testing don't understand enough about how to test consistently to get results that are a true "apples to apples" comparisons.
What About Magazine Testing?
They felt that back in the days when magazines performed comparison tests, they at least had some knowledgeable tech editors who had some resources, but even they were limited. One example was an editor who wanted to test a group of batteries with a winch, to see which one had the most power in the practical application of winching the same vehicle over a specific distance. The tech editor reached out to our engineers and they gave him a list of parameters that needed to be controlled, to give the most accurate results possible.
Part of the concern was that if you used the same winch, it wouldn't perform the same on the tenth pull as it would on the first pull regardless of which batteries were being used. If you used the same winch, you'd also want to make sure the ambient air temperature and internal winch temperatures were as close to identical as possible for each test, which meant giving the winch plenty of time to cool down in between pulls. You couldn't use different winches on the same vehicle, because there may be some variation in the manufacturing process of winches, so one winch might perform slightly better than the other two.
Those parameters alone proved to be too much for the tech editors, so they did the best they could with the resources they had and explained the limitations of their testing and the caveat that their singular test may not offer any insight into how well the battery will perform over time or how long it will last.
Do Your Own Comparisons
All hope is not lost, just because it may be very difficult, if not impossible, to find someone who can offer any marine battery testing of any substance. As the manufacturer of marine batteries (not just a brand selling someone else's marine batteries), we have the time and resources to test a wide variety of marine batteries in the ways that would offer consumers great insight into which batteries are likely to be the best performers and last the longest. However, that information is proprietary and even if we did share it, would you trust the test results any battery manufacturer provides about their competition?
As both a battery manufacturer and battery brand, we can offer some easy ways any consumer can compare lithium battery brands. These comparisons may not be definitive, but they will definitely help you narrow your focus. The first thing you should look for in any lithium marine battery is an IP rating. It is unconscionable to us that anyone would offer any marine battery testing or comparisons and not indicate whether lithium marine batteries being tested had any protection against dust or water intrusion.
"IP" stands for "Ingress Protection" and is an international standard. If a battery has an IP rating of IP65, the first digit (6) means it is dust-tight and offers complete protection against dust, sand and other solid particles. The second digit (5) means the battery is protected against low-pressure water jets from any direction, such as light splashes or spray, but it is not fully waterproof or submersible.
A battery with an IP rating of IP67 will have a higher level of protection against water intrusion than an IP65 battery, meaning it can withstand immersion in water up to 1 meter deep (3.3 feet) for up to 30 minutes. Have you ever taken water over your bow or forgotten to put your drain plug in? Many boaters have had water in their bilge at some point and likely put their batteries in a scenario where IP67 protection is put to use. That should be a minimum standard for any lithium marine battery you are considering.
The second thing you should look for in any lithium marine battery is UL and IEC safety and performance standards. It's no secret that in their rush to be early to the market with a lithium marine battery, some brands didn't invest in third party testing for safety, performance and fire protection. Many lithium marine battery brands still lack these standards and you may have heard stories about the failures of some of these batteries. A reputable lithium marine battery manufacturer will pursue both UL and IEC certifications at both the cell level and the battery level to meet American Coast Guard, ABYC and international marine requirements.
UL, IEC and IP ratings are not inexpensive or easy to come by, so any battery manufacturer who has taken the time to pursue those certifications will make a point of calling them out in their product descriptions, specifications or sales literature. In essence, they won't be hard to find.
What could be hard to find is the third thing you should look for in any lithium marine battery- a physical address. Why is a physical address important when purchasing a lithium marine battery? Because it will give you a good idea of who you are dealing with in a market, where just about anyone can buy a dozen batteries off AliExpress, print some labels and create a lithium marine battery brand overnight.
At a bare minimum, a reputable lithium battery brand will have a dedicated physical commercial address with a sign out front, where they do business. We never thought this would be a deciding factor in a battery purchasing process, until we found a lithium automotive battery brand operating out of a rented storage unit about 30 minutes from our headquarters in Glendale, Wisconsin. That went about as well as you'd expect and a bunch of Lotus owners ended up with some very expensive paperweights. If the barber cutting your hair can afford a commercial location with a sign out front, so can the people selling lithium marine batteries.
When lithium marine batteries started hitting the market, we saw the same scenario repeat itself. Lithium marine battery brands were (and still are) being sold out of storage units, home addresses, rented UPS store mailboxes and third party logistics warehouses. History has proven time and again, that the individuals behind those lithium battery brands are not committed to being in the battery business. Is the guy selling lithium marine batteries out of his house saving money he would've spent on a commercial building to make sure his customer service center is fully staffed or is he running the customer service center through his cell phone, when he feels like answering it?
Is the lithium brand with the weird name shipping batteries from a generic warehouse also selling the same lithium batteries under other brand names, so they can walk away from a brand name that gets too many negative reviews, because they have no phone number and take three to five days to answer customer emails in broken English? If you are considering a lithium marine battery brand that is claiming 10,000 cycles or a ten-year warranty, have they even been in business long enough to cycle a battery 10,000 times (once a day for 27.39 years) and will they be around to honor their warranty ten years from now?
Speaking of battery warranties, you should take the time to read the terms and conditions of any lithium marine battery you are considering. That should seem like a no-brainer, but we've read the warranties of some batteries being marketed for marine use that have specific language, that will void the warranty if the battery gets wet. Not coincidentally, those lithium marine battery brands lack any IP rating. If you can't find a warranty to read, that's an even worse sign.
Conclusion
Taking into consideration those four factors, an IP rating, UL & IEC numbers, a physical address and a warranty that covers marine use, and you will find your options have narrowed significantly. The lithium marine battery brands that check all four boxes are far more likely to sell you a quality lithium marine battery and if there is an issue with it, they are far more likely to be available for warranty assistance. It's really that simple and you don't need to spend time watching videos from people chasing subscriber counts or affiliate sites hoping for a commission on your purchase.