DeWalt Batteries, Real and unreal

I had researched a little online, enough to be marginally dangerous, and had sourced what appears to be a bargain pairing of replacement batteries for my DeWalt drills. I'll say right up front, buying replacements that are not manufactured by the OEM is always going to be a risk and potentially a waste of money, short term or long term. However, to "do science" on a very small sample, for the heck of it, I spent a small amount of money and will review what I received, remember, what I receive may not be at all what others are presented with, as they say "your results may vary" and that is the truth when navigating the online marketplace/minefield of foreign stuff/crap.

Left to right, (a) new 12v DeWalt 2Ah, (b) used DeWalt 1.5Ah and then (c) the replacement battery, which is touted to be "upgraded" 4Ah - a figure I highly doubt and will attempt to calculate based on the cell type within. The DeWalts use (a) Korean cells and assembly in Mexico, (b) Japanese cells with additional processing in China and the replacement is assumed to be 100% China. I'm not reviewing or benchmarking all of the battery packs, there is far too much of that going on online, I am just going to report on the cheap one, and by golly it was cheap, from Amazon two of the batteries were $22.40 delivered to my door, that is a mere $11.20 each compared to $48.60 for the genuine 2Ah units. (Canadian Dollars)

The build quality is reasonable, apart from the soldering, the cells appear to be clean and new but could be recycled, overall for the price I am sort of impressed, and if the assembly will fail, it will be the soldering, or the questionable circuit board. The cells are PROS18650 3.6V with a code of 22G2015Y15 so I will see if I can find out exactly what that means. I am going to assume that finding out what those identifying numbers mean will be somewhat of a rabbit hole, so I'll end part one of the review at this stage, sort of a cliffhanger...

Well, not so much as it took less than five minutes to find the datasheet on similar cells and the reported "facts" being that they are Li-ion and the individual cells are probably 2150mAh which means, as they are in series, that the capacity of the complete battery pack, if new, is approximately 2.15Ah. but there is also some information out there that these particular batteries could be other capacities, which was completely expected for mysterious Chinese products.

The 18650 number is 18mm diameter, 65mm long and circular shape. The second code, 22G2015Y15 is the enigma, I will check....

An educated guess is that capacity is 2.2Ah which is first two digits, then manufactured date is 2015 and week 15. In this research the internet was not at all useful, although it appears that the PROS relates to Henan Prospower Technologies. I have put an enquiry into their website, we will see if anything of interest comes back.

Time passes...

I have no test equipment, besides multimeters and the like, so I did a "real world" test during the ongoing reinforcement of my old garden fence over the past week and have used one of these mysterious battery packs from a full charge, screwed a total of 186 wood screws, 1-1/2" long with at least enough juice to get to the 190 mark. I did not wish to drain the battery to zero, so finished while I was ahead.

I would say that represents a good return on a single charge. I subsequently charged the battery using the DeWalt fast charger and it took about 30 minutes, so that supports the idea that the mysterious battery pack is about two amp-hour, not the imagined four that the original listing reported.

Rampant Consumerism

I suppose this can be included in this blog because it floods my brain at the moment and perhaps I will explain how this suddenly happened : 

A panel on our fence blew down and we fixed it, during that process I realized that my cordless drill, a Black and Decker, purchased back in 2008, needed a second battery, because it was very clear that other parts of the fence needed reinforcing or improving, just to keep away the inevitable day when the whole thing would be replaced.

That sounds straight forward, buy a second battery and get on with it, yet things are never that simple in the cordless tool environment, because sixteen years had passed and of course, the smart people at Black and Decker have no desire for consumers to keep their old battery operated tools, they want them to buy new battery operated tools.

I sold the B&D for $40 on marketplace and after some research, bought a DeWalt kit with two batteries and charger, I must admit the little drill you see in the centre of the photo, the brushless DCD701, is quite an impressive little unit. The bag, two batteries, charger and drill came to $135 so with my B&D discount I was $95 out of pocket.

I hear you say, but OTG, there appear to be other things in the photo, other DeWalt things, and I will commend you on your observational skills, for a week or so after the initial purchase, I was intrigued by the comments online about impact drivers and found on marketplace a chap selling a set including an impact driver, so we can add another $80 to the expenditure, now I'm up to $175

I have plans though, I will attempt to recoup some of that back by selling the brushed drill with used battery and the additional charger on marketplace. I would say watch this space but that's probably the last anyone will hear of this story.