Why Hasn't Aolithium Gotten More Attention?

The Aolithium 100Ah battery received very positive reviews from Will, Lithium Solar, and Off Grid Garage about 18 months ago but never really seemed to get much attention on this and other forums. At its debut it was $60 more than a 100Ah SOK, and SOK was already an established brand by that time. The Aolithium doesn’t offer any clear offer advantages over the SOK (other than a claimed 200A continuous discharge rate which Aolithium later downrated to 100A) so that higher introductory price may have been enough to scare people away and never take a second look.

However, the calculus in May 2023 is much different. The Aolithium is now $120 cheaper than the SOK 100Ah (which never decreased in price) and only about $140 more than low end Amazon batteries. The Aolithium has far superior build quality to any of the cheap batteries plus bluetooth and confirmed low temp charging protection. It seems to occupy a price/quality niche between SOK and the lower end batteries.

PowerUrus is one of the others in this niche and it’s the one Will currently recommends as the best value battery. Comparing the Aolithium to the PowerUrus, the specs and build quality appear to be roughly equivalent, but the facts that the Aolithium can be opened and disassembled by the end user as well as the BMS heat sink not being partially potted in rubber are clear plusses of the Aolithium that make it also seem to be a very good value and maybe a better buy for long term serviceability than any sealed box battery.

I’m curious what others think about or have experienced with Aolithum? Is it a good buy in 2023? And FWIW, I have no affiliation with Aolithium, I’m just a guy trying to figure out the best prebuilt batteries to buy for my boat!

I can’t speak to the ‘why’ in your post, but I own 3 of these batteries. I’ve had them hooked to a Victron MP 3k acting as a UPS for a garage freezer all winter and they are performing well. This is hardly a stress test but they are intended for my travel trailer and I needed to vet all the equipment before ripping out the current lead acid batt and equipment. These batteries have Bluetooth 5 which sends its signal much farther than 4 does - a nice monitoring feature. Overall I am satisfied with these batts which I purchased for ~$500 each at the time.

I'm curious as well. Especially their server rack battery.
I see that their original price on that one was a bit expensive, but it seems to have dropped in price.
It seems to be the same price as the EG4 server rack battery now.

However if you compare them to what we have in Canada, Aolithium server rack battery is $1900 CAD with free shipping and possibly no taxes(tax included?). Doesn't seem to say on checkout.
Compare that with SOK which is $2500 or Jakpier which is also $2500(solarpowerstore.ca).

SOK looks to be CSA approved according to solarpowerstore.ca so you may be paying extra for that. However, the price difference really adds up when you want multiple batteries($600 cheaper per battery).

Buying EG4 batteries in Canada will probably be much more expensive due to shipping.

I completely agree. I just ordered 2 of them after quite a bit of research. Ultimately I liked the build quality and bluetooth and everything cheaper was either lacking in features or had questionable build quality.
After my purchase it gave me a coupon code for $10 off for anyone i knew who was in the market. Bummer they didnt give it to me, but here's the code: https://loox.io/z/gkXdTcjKz
I have NO affiliation with them or anyone else.

I've now tested my AoLithium 100ah batteries in the wild. I have two of them in parallel and we boondock. The improvement over my 230ah of lead acid is wonderful. They charge faster, hold charge longer (because of the lack of voltage drop) and the bluetooth is really nice for letting me know what's going on. The app can be little finicky, but overall I am happy with it.
I have a 12v rv fridge which is not nearly as efficient as the dealer claimed, but using my little generator wit a 35ah charger on occasion I had no problem keeping things sustainable, and I no longer feel married to being at the campground during "generator hours". I plan to upgrade my converter and move the batteries closer (still on the tongue) to simplify life, and possibly add solar (suitcase), but these batteries have been a game changer for us and I highly recommend them.

Prices certainly have dropped. Currently A kit of 2x Aolithium 51.2v 100ah for $2799 delivered seems really good. I'm in on it. Now I'll need more panels.

Kinda strange they don’t recommend using the battery in parallel for more than 4 months at a time. Not sure if I’m reading that right on their site.

The Aolithium app is one of the nicest ones I’ve seen. Feels polished.

The original Aolithium 100Ah had recessed terminals. Which means if you weren’t using a bus bar, then good luck trying to fit multiple cables to the battery terminals.

My guess why they haven’t gotten more attention is a poor product launch. Recessed terminals, too high of a price and overrated continuous discharge rate. There was a target for who would buy this over other options and they failed to aim to that target.

I didn’t buy it because 1) recessed terminals (they have now mostly fixed this) and 2) no option of a 200Ah model with a 200A BMS (no 200Ah model at all yet).

I bought 2 pcs rack server battery. but....I had to wait 6 months for it and they never told me why it takes so long only it will come soon. Customer Support does NOT react on my emails. I called them and the Sales guys helped me better. They give me a discount because of all this, that's nice! Now I want to manage the battery and no software can be found that works. The batteries are said to be similar to Pylon. My Deye says that too, it recognizes them as Pylon. AOlithium's website shows you can set them to suit your needs. But no manual on how to read them. Customer support is dramatic, they never answer your questions in an acceptable way and it take days. I can definitely NOT recommend these batteries. Now still waiting on a tutorial how to get connection with the BMS, that is probably a JBD but they do not confirm that. Wish I had never bought them, they give me only a lot of stress. Ok, they do work. Got them now connected to the Deye for 4 weeks, but the Deye charge them to 100% what I don't want. Discharge goes to 35%, probably a setting in the BMS.

Translated with DeepL

Still very happy with mine:
Just an update on my two 100ah Aolithium batteries I put in our RV. I have been very happy with them and wish I could have bought more at the time. The posts on mine are normal/not low, and the bluetooth app is really nice. I have a shunt in the RV, but while towing I was able to turn on the app and see that my truck sends VERY little charge to the batteries. So I'll be upgrading that. I can also go out in the garage and quickly check the app to see the state of charge to see if I need to put the rv on charge before a trip, which so far I've only had to do once because I left the 12v refrigerator on. Speaking of that power hog, I ran into one issue where the batteries were drained to the point that they went into protective mode and couldn't be charged. I have a good, but low amp, lifepo4 charger with a "repair" function that is supposed to do exactly this, and it was unable to wake the batteries back up. I ended up putting my regular lifepo4 charger on it and then touching the battery posts with a good battery via some jumpers. The charger clicked on, I removed the jumpers, and because I had the app I could see that the batteries came out of protection mode and then charged like normal.

Stumpthumper said:

I've only had to do once because I left the 12v refrigerator on. Speaking of that power hog, I ran into one issue where the batteries were drained to the point that they went into protective mode

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How many watt hours does your 12v fridge use per day?

Tomthumb62 said:

How many watt hours does your 12v fridge use per day?

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I have 4 of these but one could handle a fridge . Jist find a fridge with low amp draw- energy star rated. My 120v - regular sized friend only draws 1.1 amps when it’s running. When a Fridge gets to temps it turns off so it’s not drawing all the time

Derka181 said:

I have 4 of these but one could handle a fridge . Jist find a fridge with low amp draw- energy star rated. My 120v - regular sized friend only draws 1.1 amps when it’s running. When a Fridge gets to temps it turns off so it’s not drawing all the time

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Yeah we have a 120VAC fridge that draws 40-80w when running and 500-800W momentarily to start up.

I was curious as to how many amps or watts a 12v fridge uses. They don’t seem worth the slight increase in efficiency compared to their price. We paid $275 for our scratch and dent AC fridge, but you can buy it full retail price at Home Depot for $500…7.4 cubic feet. A 12v fridge of that size runs about $1500.

The devil is in the details, so really ... buyer-beware.

You'll have to spend hours poring through the specs for the battery from a vendor plus review tear-downs to check for construction and components and their BMS choice, all of which goes into how you'll use them (configuration rules from the vendor, BMS amp output, etc.).

Then you'll spend more hours figuring out the issues of warranty, reliability, and support from the vendor. If this part isn't done right, it doesn't matter how good it looks, or what the vendor says it will do, because nobody is available to help you later, if you need it.

I have a pair of SOK 12v100ah batteries, for smaller projects, and I like that I can open them up and replace any piece of them, pretty easily. That's a key feature of the SOK brand (to me), and I believe it carries up thru the 48v rack-mounted models. Plus, CurrentConnected.com carries them, so you'll get great support for the SOK line, from within the USA ... that could be priceless, if you compare it to other vendor threads on this forum.

Even if you don't buy a SOK battery, you want whatever you do buy to be "as good as" in all these aspects ...

Hope this helps ...

In Canada so far it appears to be a scam... https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/aolithium.com

Definitely not a scam. I have 2 batteries in service.
It appears they had a lot of orders though, and shipping time is taking a while for some people.

SoakedUp said:

Kinda strange they don’t recommend using the battery in parallel for more than 4 months at a time. Not sure if I’m reading that right on their site.

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There is a problem with balancing individual batteries in a battery bank, and the batteries can drift out of balance over time.

The BMS's inside each battery are only balancing the cells in that battery; they don't balance the batteries relative to other batteries in the bank.
There are "master" BMS's that connect to each battery in a battery bank and keep all batteries balanced. There are some that do both like the MasterLV but they are expensive and require each individual batteries BMS to be compatible and externally connected to or be incorporated into the Master BMS.
This problem is shared with many LI batteries. Perhaps AOLithium is just being more honest than other battery manufactures.
Although it doesn't specifically state in that warning you posted, but I'd guess the solution is to remove each battery from the bank every 4 months and charge each to 100% soc, then reconnect everything and be good to go for another 4 months.
Some BMS’s allow a small amount of current to bypass the battery after fully charged and cell balance is achieved. This provides the current necessary for other batteries in a battery bank to fully charge and cells balance and requires a float voltage to be constantly supplied to a battery bank.

This later method is the least expensive and many manufactures may use it and just not state it in their advertising/specs. The trade off is a small continous power requirement.