Car battery

[blufeb95]

In general, mass market replacement batteries are commodities, differentiated by price, warranty, and service terms. In that respect, WM is hard to beat, but anecdotal experiences have their limits, or at least need to be clarified -- is a WM battery an EP, Clarios, or one the Korean makes?

It's regional and you have to go to your local store and check usually you can tell based on case design but the Serial Number prefix tells all.

 

[f355spider]

Any data on their H6? I'm seven months into my experiment, early yes, but have no hiccups to report. Left town for three weeks, no precautions taken, and no problem.

In general, mass market replacement batteries are commodities, differentiated by price, warranty, and service terms. In that respect, WM is hard to beat, but anecdotal experiences have their limits, or at least need to be clarified -- is a WM battery an EP, Clarios, or one the Korean makes?

Same also applies to any brand that multi-sources, which is most of them.

Unfortunately the Wieze was not tested in Group 48/H6 size. Top rated was the Odyssey and Optima yellow top H6. Surprising the X2 Power did poorly in H6.

One thing I am noticing is the Clarios AGMs whether sold by Interstate, AC Delco, Walmart or other labels...their rankings are all over the place...from top rated to mediocre. One big problem that confuses the testing is Clarios AGMs come from factories all over the world now. And CR is not listing the country of origin...so could be China, Mexico, Korea, Germany, or USA. Same issue with Walmart AGMs...on the east coast they are East Penn, on the west coast they are AGM. We really don't know what CR is testing.

Whether I am at Costco or Walmart I can see AGMs from multiple countries on the rack...sometimes two different countries in the same size. And it can be different each time I look. Some might be German on one visit, and Mexico and China the next. Lately mostly Korea.

 

[Carmudgeon]

It's regional and you have to go to your local store and check usually you can tell based on case design but the Serial Number prefix tells all.

No, I'm well aware of that and have spoken of it before. But when people here might say "I've never had an issue with by Brand X battery, it lasted Y years, ergo it's safe/good" it omits a lot of important context.

Like I said, replacement batteries are commodities, and like I posted evidence of before, for a large brand/distributor like Interstate, their labels aren't even applied at the factory, but at the local distributor level, to pallets of whatever anonymous units were dropped off from the supplier.

Unfortunately the Wieze was not tested in Group 48/H6 size. Top rated was the Odyssey and Optima yellow top H6. Surprising the X2 Power did poorly in H6.

One thing I am noticing is the Clarios AGMs whether sold by Interstate, AC Delco, Walmart or other labels...their rankings are all over the place...from top rated to mediocre. One big problem that confuses the testing is Clarios AGMs come from factories all over the world now. And CR is not listing the country of origin...so could be China, Mexico, Korea, Germany, or USA. Same issue with Walmart AGMs...on the east coast they are East Penn, on the west coast they are AGM. We really don't know what CR is testing.

Whether I am at Costco or Walmart I can see AGMs from multiple countries on the rack...sometimes two different countries in the same size. And it can be different each time I look. Some might be German on one visit, and Mexico and China the next. Lately mostly Korea.

I appreciate what CR does, in testing what they buy to reach their conclusions, but every time I return to consult their findings on something (local library has a sub), it seems the modern version of the magazine contains a lot less information than it used to, like the dot charts, and more general summaries. And one disadvantage they're always had is the lag between when they buy/test and publish, which often lead to their conclusions containing models that have been discontinued.

I haven't cruised the racks lately, but nothing would surprise me, including the return of the Saudi batteries.

 

[duck__dodgers]

....it seems the modern version of the magazine contains a lot less information than it used to, like the dot charts, and more general summaries.

CR "rebooted" itself 10? years ago. IIRC, don't hold me to it, it was bought by a company versus being a non-profit previously---pretty much changing everything.

i haven't subscribed to CR for a long time, so I don't have all the details....but you can find more info via search engines.

CR is probably better than nothing----but today's CR probably isn't the same as CR from 30 years ago