Knockoffs versus Original Brand Tool batteries - can you save money?

[gtaus]

With Black Friday right around the corner, I thought I would post this thread for people looking at all the tool sales going on in our favorite tool stores. Originally posted in the thread: What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks? Just offering my two cents worth of opinion on the subject. Feel free to disagree...

Knockoffs versus Original Brand Tool batteries - can you save money?

I find this question a lot on the forums. Let's start off with what many people consider the cost of an original brand battery, here for example, a Ryobi 18v 4Ah battery sold at Home Depot...

Wow, that's a lot of money! So, you go to Amazon and find a nice set of 2 knockoff batteries, 4Ah, for half the price of just 1 original Ryobi battery...

That's a much better deal, don't you think? Well, maybe not, and here is why.

1) Ryobi batteries deliver the rated capacity of their batteries, all the time. Knockoff batteries almost always exaggerate the capacity and deliver maybe only 50% of their stated capacity. I know, I have run some tests on my testing equipment at home.

2) Ryobi batteries are under warranty for 3 years. Knockoff batteries typically only have a 1 year warranty, but you might not find the seller of the knockoff batteries listed after a few months. Read the many negative reviews of people trying to get replacement knockoff batteries if they go bad within the warranty period.

3) Ryobi uses new battery cells in their packs. The knockoff batteries are known to harvest used cells from other packs and repackage them for resell.

4) The build quality of the original Ryobi battery is usually much better in terms of soldering, wire used, connectors, etc... compared to the knockoff batteries which use less expensive materials to cut costs.

5) You should never buy Ryobi batteries at full retail price. You don't have to. At least a couple times a year, Ryobi has specials that if you buy a battery pack, you get a free tool. Right now, you can buy a 2 pack of Ryobi 18v 4Ah batteries with charger for $99 and get to pick out a few tool options.

I have been considering getting a new 6-inch pruning chainsaw and that comes with the current promotion. The pruning chainsaw retails for $150.00. But when you get it for free with the purchase of the 2 pack 4Ah batteries, it magically goes down in price in the cart for $60.00, and the 2 4Ah battery combo kit with charger is reduced to $40.00.

Now, how much did you actually pay for those genuine original Ryobi 4Ah batteries? If you were already going to purchase that pruning chainsaw, I guess you say that you both saved $50 on the sale promotion and the batteries and charger were free. If you decided to return the batteries and charger to Home Depot and just keep the saw, you would only get back $40.00.

But we started off with a 2 pack of knockoff batteries, without a charger, selling for $50 on Amazon! So, are you really saving money by buying knockoff batteries? IMHO, no, you can't save money on knockoff batteries if you know when and how to buy the Ryobi tools on their promos.

I suspect the same is true for other brand named tools like DeWalt, Rigid, Milwaukee, etc... The special promotions basically give away batteries to keep you in their ecosystem.

I have been in the Ryobi 18v One Plus tool system for over 15 years. I have never purchased a battery at full retail price. Almost always I buy a new tool on my list on these special promotions and get more batteries for free. Over the 15+ years, I now have over 42 Ryobi tool batteries. Much more than I need, but they were free for the most part purchased in kits or on these special promotions.

Here is a picture of my battery shelf with some of my batteries ready to be used....

 

[gtaus]

I guess I should add that last summer I purchased a knockoff Ryobi 40v 4Ah battery for my chainsaw. It worked just fine until it dropped down to 2 bars out of the four. Then the battery stopped, still showing two bars of charge left. I charged the battery back up to full, put it back in the chainsaw, and again it died at 2 bars. Still under Amazon's return period, I contacted the seller and they said it was defective and they would exchange it. Which I did, but the second knockoff battery had the same exact problem. That one got returned for a refund. I was done with those batteries.

My conclusion was that the knockoff battery had exaggerated the true capacity of the pack and they had rigged the power bar lights somehow to make you think you still had more juice in the battery when in fact it was depleted. The knockoff batteries only gave me half the run time as my original Ryobi battery.

I suspect many people buying knockoff batteries think they are getting a great deal because the knockoff battery does work. In many situations, I only might use one or two bars on the battery pack and my job is done. Then it's back on the charger until next time I use it. I think that lots of people might do that as well. In that case, you could be tricked into thinking you saved a lot of money because you bought the knockoff battery at half the price of the original brand.

That is why I deliberately used the knockoff battery in my chainsaw, a very power-hungry battery-draining tool, that is used until the battery stops. They failed to perform well and died at about half the run time of my original Ryobi battery.

I am open to the suggestion that some knockoff battery companies might be better than others. But unless there is some kind of objective testing of the knockoff battery for true capacity, I'm done with the knockoffs.

 

[Sally PB]

I suspect many people buying knockoff batteries think they are getting a great deal because the knockoff battery does work. In many situations, I only might use one or two bars on the battery pack and my job is done. Then it's back on the charger until next time I use it. I think that lots of people might do that as well. In that case, you could be tricked into thinking you saved a lot of money because you bought the knockoff battery at half the price of the original brand.

That is why I deliberately used the knockoff battery in my chainsaw, a very power-hungry battery-draining tool, that is used until the battery stops. They failed to perform well and died at about half the run time of my original Ryobi battery.

Very good point! There are some items where the adage, "You get what you pay for" does hold true.

 

[gtaus]

Very good point! There are some items where the adage, "You get what you pay for" does hold true.

I forgot to mention that with the Home Depot sale I mentioned above, you could instead return the 6-inch pruning chainsaw and keep the 2 4Ah batteries and charger for only $40.00. That's a much better deal than buying 2 knockoff batteries, without a charger, for $50.00.

I know other brands have special promotions going on right now, too. But I am in the Ryobi line, so I keep track of those prices.

 

[Sally PB]

There are some things that I will spend the money to get the quality. BIFL (buy it for life) does apply to things that I want to last. Example: $2000 for a 40 ton woods splitter that will be part of our estate, passed to heirs. That thing is a beast and will out live us. In the mean time, it will split anything we can manage to wrestle into postition to split.

Sadly, as you have pointed out, some knock-off companies are out there to sell as many batteries (or whatever), and then disappear. If the item lasts "long enough," they don't have to deal with unhappy customers with failing product.

 

[gtaus]

If the item lasts "long enough," they don't have to deal with unhappy customers with failing product.

Yep. With a short one-year warranty, I doubt they have that many returns. Even with a bad battery, they might have decided to put off any returns and just close up shop within that first year and reopen as a new business without the headaches of supporting their previous bad batteries. Again, just reading the Amazon reviews of people trying to see warranty replacements on bad batteries. Many of those companies go out of business way before the warranty has expired.

In reality, most of the time I use a battery on a tool, it's maybe only for a few screws, a few holes to drill, or maybe a cutting a few boards. I typically still have 3 or 4 bars still remaining on the battery. Even a knock-off battery with only half the advertised Ah rating will "appear" to be working fine, probably for many years.

I understand how people can be happy with their purchase of a knock-off battery if they pay less than half the cost for the original brand battery at full retail. But I have yet to see where someone who actually tests the knock-off battery on a testing station has not shown the knock-off batteries never live up to their Ah rating.

My experience with 40v knock-off batteries in my chainsaw, running until empty, revealed that the knock-off battery only provided half the expected run time of an original Ryobi battery of the same Ah rating. I'm quite sure that if I only used those knock-off batteries for a few minutes and was done with the job, I would probably never have figured out that the real run time was half of the original.

At any rate, I have just shown that you can buy original brand batteries, in those specially priced kits, and sometimes with free tools, for even less than the price of a knock-off battery on Amazon or eBay.