This is my new favorite channel. I was searching for Hercules reviews and didn’t see this channel. Instead I searched for tool testing and here i am. I love the unbiased data analysis. I will be watching all new videos.
Great video and very useful, thanks! Bosch uses also Samsung 40T's, just without the shrink wrap. Btw a small correction, 21700 4ah cells from Murata are VTC6A, regular VTC6 are 3ah 18650. Makita xgt 4ah BL4040 pack also uses VTC6A cells, while the new BL4040F uses Murata VX40 cells. Sad to see that Milwaukee and Flex are still struggling.
@@Tools-Tested np, thank you for the great content, manufacturers are not open enough so we rely on folks like you to show us what's inside which is very important to know!
Great video! Straight to the point and very comprehensive variety of packs tested! Thank you!!! This video was just released and I just watched this video again...not too big a deal for me because I know what your saying... but....are the run time colors correct? The bar graph indicates the batteries will last longer with higher amp loads.
Here is something i found some batch of M18 8Ah and 12Ah uses Muruta VTC6a on top if you have the older 8Ah and 12Ah they use original Samsung 40T and high failure rate Bauer uses Samsung 40T series 3 which i suspect some of the newer version of 8Ah and 12Ah switch to how well they last ? too early to know some of these 12Ah has board issue which another area i seen a bunch of regardless using 40T or VTC6a
that was interesting on the milwaukee .will be waiting to see if another one performs differently . cool to see the flexvolt dewalt and all of it's components . you showed me exactly enough ,have no need to see packs pulled all the way apart
Beware of judging the cell from the colour. For example, the EVE 40P is a 4000mah 21700 and identical colour to the Samsung 40T. Ryobi and other budget brands use EVE extensively. Someone recently even found an M18 5ah using EVE 25P, which are identical colour to Samsung 25R.
I have some older m18 12ah batteries and some newer ones it seems the older ones don't keep their charge as long and don't have as much power as the newer ones
Great video again. That copper strip looks dope AF i gotta say. Very pretty. No disadvantage to doing that except cost. Those strips usually have a little piece of nickel or whatever over the copper at the spot where its welded to the cell, to make that easier to do, but i cant tell from here. That Bauer has the worst looking circuit board ive ever seen on any tool battery lmao. Thats hilarious. Also, Bosch says its 40T's in those packs, but who knows, I havent taken a look myself.
Thanks! Yep good cells in the Bauer but the circuitry is poor. Thanks for the information on the Bosch. I really didn’t want to tear it apart to see what cells it’s running.
Ive built several M18 packs. Some with Samsung 50s equally 15AH, and a few with Molicell P45B equally 13.5 AH and theybare just monsters of a battery. Thinking about building them for other people.
Nice breakdown. The Samsung 30t is a superior harder hitting cell, but they all want to go with the 40t to have the bigger number on the side BTW it is Murata むらた not Murta. It's the name of the Japanese companies founder.
I wouldn't say it's superior. It's just different. There's a middle ground between capacity and discharge right. 2Ah 21700s exist that are even "harder hitting" than the 30Ts. But...they're 2Ah. So that's dumb. So they compromise and use the 30T. Then someone decided the 40T was an even better compromise. I agree with that, because the small difference in resistance and instantaneous output between the 30T and 40T would not at all be noticeable in a 5s2p tool battery pack, or any tool battery pack really, but the capacity would be.
@@DelFam2011 it's a good question. Because they could use them. They could handle it. But idk if they will. The 40P's are a good deal cheaper. But who knows
Freaking awesome video! Since batteries are the heart and sole of any cordless tool, I love seeing battery comparisons and tear downs. I completely understand pulling less amperage on the 6s packs over the 5s packs to maintain the same wattage load. My question is would it not be fair to also subject them to a 20% greater watt load since they have a 20% increase in potential wattage? I completely understand maintaining a stable wattage load but a 30amp load on a 5s pack seems like a much bigger load then a 25 amp load on a 6s pack. Potentially 20% greater watts with 16% less load. By no means am I saying you’re wrong, I’m actually asking for clarification for myself. I’m trying to figure out what I’m missing. PS, I got the same snap on NiMh screw gun since it first came out forever ago. Love that little guy! Not the fastest or the most powerful but also for whatever reason, often my go to when I’m dismantling things like you just did.
Thanks! Yeah the goal was to keep the watt load the same for equal comparison runtime data. But yes overall you could pull the same load and gain high watts with the 24v packs.
Bought 4 m18 batteries 12ah. 3 of the 4 failed the first year. Didn't save the receipts and milwaukee claimed they were 3.5 years old and not under warranty any longer. Either Home Depot sold me old batteries or milwaukee sold HD old batteries? Either way both red and orange are no longer selling anything to me. Ive been buying alot of Flex and some Hercules. Hercules batteries are impressive.
Did you pay cash for them or something? HD can pull up receipts with a card. I also have my in store purchases linked to my online account so my in store receipts are saved there too
eventually what will happen with that Flex battery is that it will stop taking charge. It discharges even while you are not using it only for the leaking batteries. The non leaking appears to not have that issue yet. As a guy who uses Ego batteries, I know from experience that their batteries won't last you more than 2 years and I feel like the Flex batteries are probably built or engineered the same way. Edit: I do not know why they are built like the way they are because that doesn’t look good from a consumer’s standpoint. IMO, I feel the failure rate for chervon batteries are probably higher.
Interesting. Maybe the leaking material causes some battery discharge due to conduction from the liquid itself? They say it’s a phase change liquid. So I assume it’s something that is solid at normal battery temperature, and melts to absorb heat. Giving you a bit longer before the battery actually gets hot. With the side effect of also taking longer to cool down again. :)
Every battery pack discharges even when not in use. It's universal and unavoidable. If there a circuit board attached there's always going to be a very tiny parasitic drain. Very tiny, ideally as tiny as possible so that it would take several years to discharge the battery, but it's there nonetheless. Only way to avoid that is to physically remove the cell from the pack. So they're all designed like to different degrees. Second, the batteries aren't leaking. A thermal interface material, the stuff they put in between a thing that gets hot and it's heat sink, like a high end processor in a gaming computer, is leaking out. The type of TIM they are using is called phase change. These are solid at room temperature and become soft and gooey when they get hot. The idea being this combines the effectiveness of a thermal grease with the less messy and easier to apply, but less effective at conducting heat thermal pads. Obviously in this case somebody at Flex didn't follow the recipe on that batch and they're getting a lot less solid than they should be. They aren't designed to do this obviously, it's an intended failure. But this could be getting on the electronics and it's probably slightly electrically conductive, as most thermally conductive things are, and could definitely be causing faster rates of discharge. Like OP said. It would depend on what exactly gets wet. Either way, not a good situation, but not an intentional design.
@@jsplasha Oh, interesting - so some of them will melt to a consistency that wouldn’t need a properly waterproof enclosure? For some reason I was assuming they’d melt to the viscosity of water. But this is totally outside my actual field. The niftiest phase change devices I’ve seen were passive coolers designed for oil pipelines. They would be used on the support columns so that the heat from the pipeline wouldn’t melt the permafrost and let the pipeline sink in. Nifty idea, but unfortunately it seems that there are some other indirect ways the oil is melting the permafrost. :)
@@gf2ealso, lithium batteries must be used and not stored full or empty because the battery management system will not allow a charge once the nominal voltage is too low. You can however use a charged battery pack and do a straight jump from cell to cell if you have the ability to storage of lithium batteries should be at room temperature and at around 60% charge and monitored every few months if not in use
Do you know why the ridgid 8ah had such a poor performance compared to others since it has samsung 40t like all the other ones and the 12ah performs well. And do you know what could make the wh rating not the same as the one tested ?
The m18 12.0ah has a really crappy bms that does not balance charge the cells. Every m18 12.0 battery always becomes upbalance after less than 1 year. After fully charged 4 of the 5 sets of cells will be fully charged at 4.2volts and 1 set will be at 3.7volts which is 50% charged so the whole pack only has 50% capacity since the whole pack stops working when any one of the 5 cells are discharged.
@@Tools-Tested Every 5 or so charges I literally have to open up the Milwaukee 12.0ah battery’s fine the one group of cells that’s under charged and manually charge that one group with my rc car charger with small alligator clips. It’s really annoying. Happens to the to the m18 8.0ah batteries too but does not get out of balance as fast as the 12.0ah also seems to not to happen to any of the other Milwaukee batteries.
the BMS in the M18 12ah battery is dog sh*t. i've had multiple of these batteries replaced under warranty. for some reason it often doesn't charge all the cells to the maximum, OR discharges some cells faster than others. once the voltages among the cells are imbalanced, it will stop charging as soon as ANY cell in the pack hits 4.2V. what ends up happening is that the charger thinks the battery is full when in reality you're are 85%-90% full. the battery meter will still show full charge because 85%+ is still enough to illuminate all bars. eventually, over time some of the cells will reach a voltage where they can no longer be charged at all and the battery will no longer work.
Makes sense, would explain why the charger says it fully charged but the runtime is horrible compared to the rest. Sad part is this pack is basically brand new with less than 10 cycles on in it and was bought at HD. Thanks for the info!
@@Tools-Tested I'm no expert but I've seen a couple videos where all the M18 12AH packs need is to be balanced. As solomonshv said, they stop charging when any cell hits 4.2V and stop the discharge when the first cell gets to 2.5 or 3.0V maybe. I only have one of the 12AH batteries but I plan on opening it and balancing the cells soon. Just found your channel today. I'm impressed and of course subscribed.
These chargers are set NOT to charge them to 100% because it degrades cycle life down on them. This is similar to how tesla advises you to charge their cars, only to ~80% unless you ready need the extra range. Ideally you want to work from 25-85% charge range for a long cycle on lithium batteries.
NOTE on the runtime chart 30amp and 5 are labeled wrong, should be flipped of course with the 30amp time being the lowest.
This is my new favorite channel.
I was searching for Hercules reviews and didn’t see this channel. Instead I searched for tool testing and here i am.
I love the unbiased data analysis. I will be watching all new videos.
Glad you like the channel!
Always doing the lord's work. Much appreciated.
No problem!
Great video and very useful, thanks! Bosch uses also Samsung 40T's, just without the shrink wrap.
Btw a small correction, 21700 4ah cells from Murata are VTC6A, regular VTC6 are 3ah 18650.
Makita xgt 4ah BL4040 pack also uses VTC6A cells, while the new BL4040F uses Murata VX40 cells.
Sad to see that Milwaukee and Flex are still struggling.
Thanks! and thanks for the info on the bosch, I couldn't justify ripping it apart to see. Yeah I was shocked by the Milwaukee.
@@Tools-Tested np, thank you for the great content, manufacturers are not open enough so we rely on folks like you to show us what's inside which is very important to know!
The Bosch batteries run Samsung 40T 21700’s. I had a pack that failed by defective temperature sensor so I salvaged the cells which are perfect.
Thanks for the info!
0:26 Are the run time charts labelled backwards - blue should be 30A load, red 5A?
Yep lol good catch.
Great video! Straight to the point and very comprehensive variety of packs tested! Thank you!!!
This video was just released and I just watched this video again...not too big a deal for me because I know what your saying... but....are the run time colors correct? The bar graph indicates the batteries will last longer with higher amp loads.
Here is something i found
some batch of M18 8Ah and 12Ah uses Muruta VTC6a
on top
if you have the older 8Ah and 12Ah
they use original Samsung 40T and high failure rate
Bauer uses Samsung 40T series 3
which i suspect some of the newer version of 8Ah and 12Ah switch to
how well they last ? too early to know
some of these 12Ah has board issue which another area i seen a bunch of regardless using 40T or VTC6a
that was interesting on the milwaukee .will be waiting to see if another one performs differently . cool to see the flexvolt dewalt and all of it's components . you showed me exactly enough ,have no need to see packs pulled all the way apart
Yeah I will have to buy another pack and see, sad part is this one was brand new from HD. The flexvolts definitely have a lot going on inside.
The Hercules 12ah batteries are often on sale for $100 with the 8ah going on sale for $60 (2 for $119)
Yeah its crazy how good of value the Hercules packs are when compared to the other brands.
$49 for the 8ah right now. Grabbed 6 of them. Unbeatable.
Such a helpful Video!!!
Glad you found it useful!
Ridgid Max output is a step backwards from the octane .
Yep, looks like they are releasing Max batteries later this year similar to the octane.
Beware of judging the cell from the colour. For example, the EVE 40P is a 4000mah 21700 and identical colour to the Samsung 40T. Ryobi and other budget brands use EVE extensively. Someone recently even found an M18 5ah using EVE 25P, which are identical colour to Samsung 25R.
Very good point on the color. I was actually shocked the ryobi was running Samsungs I expected it to have EVEs like the other packs.
I have some older m18 12ah batteries and some newer ones it seems the older ones don't keep their charge as long and don't have as much power as the newer ones
Interesting, thanks for the info maybe this one was just old stock.
Great video again. That copper strip looks dope AF i gotta say. Very pretty. No disadvantage to doing that except cost. Those strips usually have a little piece of nickel or whatever over the copper at the spot where its welded to the cell, to make that easier to do, but i cant tell from here.
That Bauer has the worst looking circuit board ive ever seen on any tool battery lmao. Thats hilarious.
Also, Bosch says its 40T's in those packs, but who knows, I havent taken a look myself.
Thanks! Yep good cells in the Bauer but the circuitry is poor. Thanks for the information on the Bosch. I really didn’t want to tear it apart to see what cells it’s running.
Ive built several M18 packs. Some with Samsung 50s equally 15AH, and a few with Molicell P45B equally 13.5 AH and theybare just monsters of a battery. Thinking about building them for other people.
Yeah I imagine those packs have some kick, I’m shocked Milwaukee hasn’t built some.
Ryobi was kind enough to give thier packs a heat sink.
Yep
Nice breakdown. The Samsung 30t is a superior harder hitting cell, but they all want to go with the 40t to have the bigger number on the side
BTW it is Murata むらた not Murta. It's the name of the Japanese companies founder.
I wouldn't say it's superior. It's just different. There's a middle ground between capacity and discharge right. 2Ah 21700s exist that are even "harder hitting" than the 30Ts. But...they're 2Ah. So that's dumb. So they compromise and use the 30T. Then someone decided the 40T was an even better compromise. I agree with that, because the small difference in resistance and instantaneous output between the 30T and 40T would not at all be noticeable in a 5s2p tool battery pack, or any tool battery pack really, but the capacity would be.
@@jsplashawonder when they'll start moving over to a 50s. I have a 15ah m18 I built and run the Milwaukee for a long time on thenm18 chainsaw
@@DelFam2011 it's a good question. Because they could use them. They could handle it. But idk if they will. The 40P's are a good deal cheaper. But who knows
Freaking awesome video! Since batteries are the heart and sole of any cordless tool, I love seeing battery comparisons and tear downs. I completely understand pulling less amperage on the 6s packs over the 5s packs to maintain the same wattage load. My question is would it not be fair to also subject them to a 20% greater watt load since they have a 20% increase in potential wattage? I completely understand maintaining a stable wattage load but a 30amp load on a 5s pack seems like a much bigger load then a 25 amp load on a 6s pack. Potentially 20% greater watts with 16% less load. By no means am I saying you’re wrong, I’m actually asking for clarification for myself. I’m trying to figure out what I’m missing.
PS, I got the same snap on NiMh screw gun since it first came out forever ago. Love that little guy! Not the fastest or the most powerful but also for whatever reason, often my go to when I’m dismantling things like you just did.
Thanks! Yeah the goal was to keep the watt load the same for equal comparison runtime data.
But yes overall you could pull the same load and gain high watts with the 24v packs.
Bought 4 m18 batteries 12ah. 3 of the 4 failed the first year. Didn't save the receipts and milwaukee claimed they were 3.5 years old and not under warranty any longer. Either Home Depot sold me old batteries or milwaukee sold HD old batteries? Either way both red and orange are no longer selling anything to me. Ive been buying alot of Flex and some Hercules. Hercules batteries are impressive.
Yep the Hercules battery’s are a great value IMO.
Did you pay cash for them or something? HD can pull up receipts with a card. I also have my in store purchases linked to my online account so my in store receipts are saved there too
@@james2042 they were not able to find it by either card. I had remembered using card half the time and cash the rest. These must have been cash.
Date 2023 18th week on a dewalt 8ah just bought with grinder kit.That will cut my battery warranty in half .2024 45th week now. Kit was $149 DCG415W1
Love the Hercules Extreme battery's
No metabo hpt? Oh ya they only have two packs available for the multivolt line
Well the multivolt line does have a 4/8ah battery, so at 18v it is 8ah. They technically have 3 batteries but the small one is 18v only
eventually what will happen with that Flex battery is that it will stop taking charge. It discharges even while you are not using it only for the leaking batteries. The non leaking appears to not have that issue yet. As a guy who uses Ego batteries, I know from experience that their batteries won't last you more than 2 years and I feel like the Flex batteries are probably built or engineered the same way. Edit: I do not know why they are built like the way they are because that doesn’t look good from a consumer’s standpoint. IMO, I feel the failure rate for chervon batteries are probably higher.
Interesting. Maybe the leaking material causes some battery discharge due to conduction from the liquid itself?
They say it’s a phase change liquid. So I assume it’s something that is solid at normal battery temperature, and melts to absorb heat. Giving you a bit longer before the battery actually gets hot. With the side effect of also taking longer to cool down again. :)
Yep they claim it's has no impact, but I would agree its probably conductive causing the pack to discharge if the substance gets in the wrong area.
Every battery pack discharges even when not in use. It's universal and unavoidable. If there a circuit board attached there's always going to be a very tiny parasitic drain. Very tiny, ideally as tiny as possible so that it would take several years to discharge the battery, but it's there nonetheless. Only way to avoid that is to physically remove the cell from the pack. So they're all designed like to different degrees.
Second, the batteries aren't leaking. A thermal interface material, the stuff they put in between a thing that gets hot and it's heat sink, like a high end processor in a gaming computer, is leaking out. The type of TIM they are using is called phase change. These are solid at room temperature and become soft and gooey when they get hot. The idea being this combines the effectiveness of a thermal grease with the less messy and easier to apply, but less effective at conducting heat thermal pads. Obviously in this case somebody at Flex didn't follow the recipe on that batch and they're getting a lot less solid than they should be. They aren't designed to do this obviously, it's an intended failure.
But this could be getting on the electronics and it's probably slightly electrically conductive, as most thermally conductive things are, and could definitely be causing faster rates of discharge. Like OP said. It would depend on what exactly gets wet. Either way, not a good situation, but not an intentional design.
@@jsplasha Oh, interesting - so some of them will melt to a consistency that wouldn’t need a properly waterproof enclosure?
For some reason I was assuming they’d melt to the viscosity of water. But this is totally outside my actual field.
The niftiest phase change devices I’ve seen were passive coolers designed for oil pipelines. They would be used on the support columns so that the heat from the pipeline wouldn’t melt the permafrost and let the pipeline sink in. Nifty idea, but unfortunately it seems that there are some other indirect ways the oil is melting the permafrost. :)
@@gf2ealso, lithium batteries must be used and not stored full or empty because the battery management system will not allow a charge once the nominal voltage is too low. You can however use a charged battery pack and do a straight jump from cell to cell if you have the ability to storage of lithium batteries should be at room temperature and at around 60% charge and monitored every few months if not in use
Do you know why the ridgid 8ah had such a poor performance compared to others since it has samsung 40t like all the other ones and the 12ah performs well.
And do you know what could make the wh rating not the same as the one tested ?
Must be due to the circuit, just like how bad the Milwaukee performed.
The m18 12.0ah has a really crappy bms that does not balance charge the cells. Every m18 12.0 battery always becomes upbalance after less than 1 year. After fully charged 4 of the 5 sets of cells will be fully charged at 4.2volts and 1 set will be at 3.7volts which is 50% charged so the whole pack only has 50% capacity since the whole pack stops working when any one of the 5 cells are discharged.
Explains the performance of both my 12ah, hopefully the new 12ah forge will resolve this issue.
@@Tools-Tested Every 5 or so charges I literally have to open up the Milwaukee 12.0ah battery’s fine the one group of cells that’s under charged and manually charge that one group with my rc car charger with small alligator clips. It’s really annoying. Happens to the to the m18 8.0ah batteries too but does not get out of balance as fast as the 12.0ah also seems to not to happen to any of the other Milwaukee batteries.
Flex batteries are a big issue 💯
Yep, I haven't had an issue yet with the stacked packs though.
the BMS in the M18 12ah battery is dog sh*t. i've had multiple of these batteries replaced under warranty. for some reason it often doesn't charge all the cells to the maximum, OR discharges some cells faster than others. once the voltages among the cells are imbalanced, it will stop charging as soon as ANY cell in the pack hits 4.2V. what ends up happening is that the charger thinks the battery is full when in reality you're are 85%-90% full. the battery meter will still show full charge because 85%+ is still enough to illuminate all bars.
eventually, over time some of the cells will reach a voltage where they can no longer be charged at all and the battery will no longer work.
Makes sense, would explain why the charger says it fully charged but the runtime is horrible compared to the rest. Sad part is this pack is basically brand new with less than 10 cycles on in it and was bought at HD. Thanks for the info!
@@Tools-Tested I'm no expert but I've seen a couple videos where all the M18 12AH packs need is to be balanced. As solomonshv said, they stop charging when any cell hits 4.2V and stop the discharge when the first cell gets to 2.5 or 3.0V maybe. I only have one of the 12AH batteries but I plan on opening it and balancing the cells soon.
Just found your channel today. I'm impressed and of course subscribed.
These chargers are set NOT to charge them to 100% because it degrades cycle life down on them. This is similar to how tesla advises you to charge their cars, only to ~80% unless you ready need the extra range. Ideally you want to work from 25-85% charge range for a long cycle on lithium batteries.