Battery Load Tester $19.99

Looks like a good deal on a good product. Anyone has experience on this, pros and cons?

Mrbj wrote: ↑ Looks like a good deal on a good product. Anyone has experience on this, pros and cons?

Honestly, if you're only going to buy one, get something like this, https://www.princessauto.com/en/12v-bat ... 0008943383

Or wait for a sale on Amazon or order from AliExpress and wait for shipping.

BeaverLiquor wrote: ↑ Honestly, if you're only going to buy one, get something like this, https://www.princessauto.com/en/12v-bat ... 0008943383

Or wait for a sale on Amazon or order from AliExpress and wait for shipping.

those... don't do load testing. You may as well take a multi meter to your battery as that's pretty much all it's checking.

BeaverLiquor wrote: ↑ Honestly, if you're only going to buy one, get something like this, https://www.princessauto.com/en/12v-bat ... 0008943383

Or wait for a sale on Amazon or order from AliExpress and wait for shipping.

As I mentioned, the digital ones are more expensive and fancy (and maybe crappy)... but they're usually analyzers like that one, which *estimate* the battery "health" instead of actually load testing like this analog one.

Have you seen analog load testers from Amazon or AliExpress for a better price? When I looked they were more.

Kazushi wrote: ↑
those... don't do load testing. You may as well take a multi meter to your battery as that's pretty much all it's checking.

fizikz wrote: ↑
As I mentioned, the digital ones are more expensive and fancy (and maybe crappy)... but they're usually analyzers like that one, which *estimate* the battery "health" instead of actually load testing like this analog one.

Have you seen analog load testers from Amazon or AliExpress for a better price? When I looked they were more.

The PA tester is not as fancy but can test CCA.

BeaverLiquor wrote: ↑

The PA tester is not as fancy but can test CCA.

Again, the digital analyzer is estimating, while a carbon pile load tester is putting a real load drawing many amps.

I like the old fashioned carbon pile / resistive load load tester myself, nothing like putting a very large physical load on the actual battery to know the condition as it is under a heavy AMP load. I have the Schumacher BT-100 ($65 on Amazon) however this Princess Auto is pretty much the same device just a different manufacturer and on sale for $19.99 down from regular price of $39.99.

Carbon pile load tester like this puts a "real load" on the battery for several seconds. It's useful for testing batteries that might test good with an electronic tester but don't actually work well in real life. However it seems it's more likely that the opposite will happen on suspect batteries.

Personally I don't have a carbon pile tester and instead have an Ancel BA201 which I think I got for like $35-40 off Aliexpress (direct from Ancel's store there). As long as you know the rated CCA/CA/etc. and type of battery you are testing, it will spit out everything from SOH, SOC, voltage, IR, and a value for CA/CCA and capacity. Can also show you how low the voltage goes while cranking on a graph. Problem is, electronic testers like this cost a good bit more, like pretty much everything these days. It looks like they are closer to $60 now for the dame model.

So, $20 for this is a good deal, for someone that doesn't want to buy a more expensive electronic tester.

Puts a mild load on a car battery. You get what you paid for.

BeaverLiquor wrote: ↑ Honestly, if you're only going to buy one, get something like this, https://www.princessauto.com/en/12v-bat ... 0008943383

Or wait for a sale on Amazon or order from AliExpress and wait for shipping.

Keep in mind as one reviewer mentioned, the digital displays typically crap out in colder weather (or may have issues). No issues with Analog ones...

ES_Revenge wrote: ↑As long as you know the rated CCA/CA/etc. and type of battery you are testing, it will spit out everything from SOH, SOC, voltage, IR, and a value for CA/CCA and capacity. Can also show you how low the voltage goes while cranking on a graph.

This information is great, but the real question is how accurate is it? For example, internal resistance measurements on batteries are notoriously unreliable because of contact resistance. While I would love to have all of those stats, it is oddly difficult to find exactly what is the operating principle of the digital analyzers and how accurate and reliable they are.

In contrast, the carbon pile / resistive load tester is just drawing a big ~100 Amp current through its resistor and measuring the battery's voltage drop. That's what happens to the battery under actual use, so that's where "the rubber meets the road." Plus you don't have to worry about changing batteries on the tester or dealing with cold weather problems. For the simplicity, low cost, and reliability, I'm still favoring the old fashioned load tester, at least until there is clearer information about the digital analyzers.

fizikz wrote: ↑ This information is great, but the real question is how accurate is it? For example, internal resistance measurements on batteries are notoriously unreliable because of contact resistance. While I would love to have all of those stats, it is oddly difficult to find exactly what is the operating principle of the digital analyzers and how accurate and reliable they are.

The general consensus in the industry these days is that the electronic testers are better judges of whether a battery is actually good or not.

fizikz wrote: ↑ In contrast, the carbon pile / resistive load tester is just drawing a big ~100 Amp current through its resistor and measuring the battery's voltage drop. That's what happens to the battery under actual use, so that's where "the rubber meets the road." Plus you don't have to worry about changing batteries on the tester or dealing with cold weather problems. For the simplicity, low cost, and reliability, I'm still favoring the old fashioned load tester, at least until there is clearer information about the digital analyzers.

Sure but you can see quite clearly in the video posted earlier in this thread, the opposite occurred. There was a vehicle with a suspect battery yet every other test including the carbon pile test said it was good. However the electronic tester found it to have only 60% of its CCA and also recommended replacing it, which actually remedied the problem with the vehicle.

ES_Revenge wrote: ↑ The general consensus in the industry these days is that the electronic testers are better judges of whether a battery is actually good or not.

Any sources with concrete information? I've been looking for a long time without luck.

ES_Revenge wrote: ↑Sure but you can see quite clearly in the video posted earlier in this thread, the opposite occurred. There was a vehicle with a suspect battery yet every other test including the carbon pile test said it was good. However the electronic tester found it to have only 60% of its CCA and also recommended replacing it, which actually remedied the problem with the vehicle.

The testers disagreed, but it's not clear which was inaccurate. The video I posted says the opposite. Every youtuber and blogger has an opinion, but rarely does anyone provide concrete, detailed justification from a scientific and engineering perspective.

I suspect it is possible to have precision analyzers but at what cost? The low end of any type of electronic device tends to be crap, which throws even more doubts about the usefulness of their output.

IMO the digital testers are better from a practical perspective, not only because it has other features like a starting, charging tests, but the methodology to estimate CCA is well proven. This is ultimately what you care about to determine if the battery is still good for the winter. A battery can behave dramatically different in a load test when cold vs warm so unless you chuck the battery in a freezer before load testing, it's only going to be an approximation for cold crank.

The digital units also don't drain much juice so I'll bring it when picking out what new battery on a shelf to buy. It's kind of a d!ck move to bring a chunky load tester to the store and drain each battery to see which one is freshest.

Wondering if this would be good to test 12V SLA batteries that are for UPS/Power Boxes?

I have had some of these that read 12-13V but when a load is applied they fail instantly.

Might have to buy one for my dad!

runner978 wrote: ↑IMO the digital testers are better from a practical perspective, not only because it has other features like a starting, charging tests, but the methodology to estimate CCA is well proven.

And what is that methodology, exactly?

The most information I've heard is that it pulls a small current, and based on assumptions from the user's input of the battery type and CCA, it calculates the internal resistance of the battery and gives results. Internal resistance of a battery is very useful to know, but difficult to measure reliably and accurately, so again... what is the reliability of these results?

brunes wrote: ↑ Wondering if this would be good to test 12V SLA batteries that are for UPS/Power Boxes?

I really want to know this too. I wonder if pulling 100A is too much for UPS batteries. Has anyone tried?

If this load tester is suitable for UPS batteries it would be a huge plus. It is so annoying to have a UPS in place for months or years and have it fail soon after it is needed. Testing them with a normal load (eg. pulling the UPS's wall plug) and timing how long it lasts is one way but it's tedious.

fizikz wrote: ↑ Again, the digital analyzer is estimating, while a carbon pile load tester is putting a real load drawing many amps.

But you are not comparing the same type of load tester.

Watch the video you posted, he loads the battery to half the rated CCA's to test the battery properly, the load tester you posted only does 100 amps and will not properly test most batteries found in cars.

If you want a load tester you're going to need one of these, https://www.princessauto.com/en/500a-ba ... 0008494007 https://www.princessauto.com/en/12v-dig ... 0008560401

If you're only going to buy one a conductance tester is much more useful than the 100 amp one.