DIY batteries a lot cheaper?

[Just John]

The 280ah cells are the best value, with some trade offs. There have been a lot of substandard cells on the chinese Ali sites recently, I believe also Amazon. The Luyuan 280ah cells and the JBD BMS would be my comparison items - check out in more depth and others on this forum.

I've done extensive testing of various models of Daly and JBD BMSs, and JBD is definitely what I would recommend. I did have to calibrate mine to get things to work as well as they should. Daly was worse.

While quality cells direct from china have gotten more expensive, the pre-made products available in the US have gotten cheaper. Ampere Time and Chins would be the one's I'd look at, in addition to the SOK.

Basically if 100AH meets your needs, you should go with one of the cheap Amazon ones. The Zooms Will reviewed are a very good price, and I noticed others (Chins) have dropped to match them. When you get to 200AH, it's cheaper to build your own 280AH battery, and get nice extras like Bluetooth monitoring, extra capacity, and the ability to "service" them if they develop a problem..

Another thing about the quality products is a lot of the fine tuning stuff that's also detailed on this site is not needed. Those techniques, and the equipment to do it, can make those bargain cells work but its more than I wanted to take on.

This is true, pretty much for 100AH 12v batteries, it's cheaper and much easier to purchase a good one Will has reviewed on Amazon.