I've never heard of them before, but my thought on turn-key batteries, is since it is a proprietary technology 'black box' to the consumer, you have no idea how good the BMS is, it is unmanaged, no idea what cells are used, etc, that means the success of the battery is 'all on the manufacturer'. If I built my own battery then the success of the solution is 'all on me'!
With this said, I have no problem buying a turn-key battery, but really only if the warranty met my expectations. So for example, if a turn-key battery has a 1-year warranty, if battery fails after 1.5 years say, then the manufacturer is off the hook (all on me from there on out), and you must get out the carbide wheel to cut the thing open and troubleshoot a failure. Then the next 9 years (or whatever) of that battery is on your shoulders, unless you decide to just throw it away.
If you build your own solution, then you know what's in it and can fix anything that ever goes wrong on it (uses readily available replacement parts), also can keep a closer eye on the maintenance of the cells over time (as it's not sealed shut), etc.
So in other words, if I did buy a turn-key solution, I would either make sure it had an awesome warranty like 5 or 10 years (since we know lithium cells are supposed to last sooo many cycles), or if the warranty was much less than that, I would understand the implications of it and just know to call it a loss if it fails prematurely (it's not necessarily bad to gamble if you know the risk and still don't mind the idea of walking away with a potential loss).
So looking at the warranty they have on this TO warranty page:
All ToBattery products are individually inspected and quality-checked before shipment. Should any of our products fail due to any inherent defects in the product itself, we will gladly repair or replace as covered under our warranty. However some items are not covered and d
tobattery.com
...it doesn't sound like they're too confident in its long-term reliability based on this:
"
The warranty is prorated 1 year warranty, & divided into three periods from date of invoice. Coverage is as follows:
Month | Discount from MSRP
1~3 | 100%
3~6 | 60%
6-12 | 40%
[For example, a valid warranty claim made 3 month after the date of purchase would result in a free replacement from ToBattery. If the warranty claim is made 7 month after the date of purchase, the customer will pay for 60% of the MSRP price of the replacement battery.
"
If you're fine with those terms, then go for it, test it out and report back to the forum if it was a good pick or had any issues. Wish ya the best.. You never know, it could be the 'diamond in the rough' and turn out to be a really great battery.
