Talentcell 12V LiFePO4 Battery Pack LF120A1, Deep Cycle Rechargeable 153.6Wh 12.8V 12Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries

Review of talentcell LF120A1 batteries.Planned use: cpap machine backpackingI bought a specially designed charger for LiFePo4 batteries. This is important. The charger is a "CTEK (56-926) LITHIUM US 12 Volt Fully Automatic LiFePO4 Battery Charger", $95, bought from Amazon. It is engineered to provide the right voltage waveforms to correctly charge LiFePo4 batteries. The voltages are just different enough to make a lead acid battery charger worse than useless. With the right charger, the batteries will be fully charged after a couple of full charge and discharge cycles.In order to have any idea what was going on with these batteries, I also bought a "HiLetgo DC 6.5-100V 0-20A LCD Display Digital Ammeter " for about $12. This little beautiful device would give me the current, voltage, power and total watt hour consumption. This is how I know that these batteries put out 145 wH of energy against a specification of 153 wH. This was close enough for me and about 95% of what was claimed. I know this after testing with a 12 volt to 120 volt converter and running a 60 lamp for two hours. See the pictures of the test rig.The LiFePo4 batteries were, for about 3.2 lbs, enough to run my cpap machine without a humidifier for two nights in a row without recharging. I also tested this with the watt meter attached and used a single battery to provide 54 wH for the first night and 63 the second night to run the cpap. The battery still had about 30 watt hours remaining after another test. So, with two of these batteries I can be out five days (4 nights) with a safety margin.They are worth the $82 each that I spent.Regarding running a cpap: first of all, forget about the humidifier for backpacking. Humidifiers are power hogs. You'll need at least two of these 153 wH batteries to make it through a single night. Not practical for backpacking.Second, a more subtle issue is that some cpap machines only have 120 volt inputs, while others will accept 12 volt dc input voltage to run the cpap. Still others accept other voltages like 14.5 or 19 volts dc.I tried to use a Dreamstation Go cpap that only allowed 120 volts input. This required a sinewave converter, which I bought. But, unfortunately, there are power losses with conversions and there are two, one that I would carry outside the cpap, and a second one internal to to the cpap. The end result is that 80% of one of those big LiFePo4 153 wH batteries was consumed during a single night instead of 50%. This was a fail. I ended up using an older Phillips Respironics cpap, which luckily had a 12 volt input, for the above testing. No sinewave converter required. Just plumb the battery 12 volts to the input of the cpap and everything worked beautifully and efficiently. (Leave the humidifier at home).Overall, if you buy a medical cpap battery you can easily spend $300 for a battery that will get you through one night. Or you can spend a little more than that and get two of these 153 watt hour LiFePo4 batteries plus a specially designed charger plus the watt meter plus a sinewave converter plus some cables and have an overall solution the will give you more power and still be very lightweight and reasonable cost.

So far, so good. I removed my passenger Power Leather Car Seat so that I could install a carpeted platform for my 2 dogs. Rather than throw out the nice car seat, I decided to convert it into a Power Reclining, Power Lumbar Support, office chair. It worked using this Talentcell LiFePO4 battery. The car seat was 8-way power adjustable, but I removed most of the mechanisms to cut weight and decrease the height of the chair. This left only the recline motor and lumbar support motor. Both motors are 12v Polarity Reversing motors. I secured the chair to a custom wooden base with Marine U-bolts.I got 2 polarity reversing momentary switches, resettable 5 amp fuses, round lighted voltage and capacity meter, and mounting plates. I also got a MySit 2.2 inch sink short chair piston and a super heavy duty Chair piston mounting plate with tilt. I also ordered a better 3 amp charger with every protection available for LFP batteries. I went with the Talentcell because it has the nice screw terminals that readily accept ring terminal connectors.Everything is working great. For under $200 I now have a power office chair that is high end real leather. It is super comfortable as most good car seats are. A similarly equipped chair on Amazon is $500 plus. I went with the LiFePO4 over Lithium Ion because of the much higher safety (lower fire risk). I still have to paint the wood frame base and switch side panels. It has been a fun project. Man, it's so cool to be able to order all the stuff needed from Amazon.

I would absolutely purchase additional batteries based on customer support.Phenomenal customer support. I bought two 12V 12aH batteries, and one of them is acting weird. I sent an email to TalenCell through their website and had a reply in less than 24 hours. I am currently engaged in a troubleshooting dialog via email with TalentCell.I will update this review as the troubleshooting continues.It should be mentioned that I am using a kill switch, LED, battery monitor, and in line fuses with the battery in question. This battery will provide amperage to a parallel resistor load no problem, but will not power my ham radio transceiver, Icom 706MkIIg. Let's call this battery #2.The other battery, battery #1, without the added components powers the radio just fine.Even when I remove the components from battery #2, it will not power the 706.3/22/2021I have tried several different methods of charging and I still cannot get battery #2 to power the radio. I removedeverything I added to the battery (monitor, switch, LED) and connected it to a bench power supply and two DMM, one to monitor current and one to monitor voltage. The battery appears to top out at 14.2V at which point the amperage falls to 0.I installed all the components on battery #1, and it works no problem. It will power the monitor, LED, the switch functions, and it will power my radio.I am still engaged in troubleshooting with TalentCell via email to see if I can somehow get battery #2 working before I return it.3/23/2021TalentCell customer support was very good for me. I know others have had different outcomes, but for me they have been great. I did contact them directly through their website.The representative I spoke with had me clearly explain what the issue was, and provide some evidence that the battery was doing what I said it was doing. Once it was verified that the battery in fact was not performing correctly, they are replacing the battery.I am upping the number of stars from 3 to 4 for now, and will continue to update this review as I use the batteries more.3/25I couldn't get it out of my head why the bad battery was behaving the way it was, so I took a shot in the dark and emailed the representative I had been speaking with and asked if a schematic of the BMS could be sent. Within 15 minutes I received a full datasheet with schematic. The datasheet is in both English and Chinese, and all of the critical information I am interested in, is in English!I know others have had different results, but my customer support from TalentCell has been great!! When the new battery arrives and I can verify it's performance I will update to 5 stars.3/29/2021The replacement battery arrived today, right on time. It appears to have shipped via Amazon. I have not yet tested it as I have been very busy, bit will update when I can.4/15/2021The replacement battery charges very well with the TalentCell 14.6v charger (available on Amazon). These batteries are a good value for the price. I suggest using a proper LiFePo4 14.6v charger wit them to get the best performance.I would buy more TalentCell products without hesitation.