This battery is great for home workshops, but is useless for construction sites or any commercial application. When the temperature is below 50 the battery will not charge! The old ryobi batteries charged any time no matter what. Ryobi 130429001 18-Volt 2.4-AMP Hour Li-Ion Battery
Yeah, they're expensive (and I don't agree with the reviews that give them one star because of the price: You're supposed to be reviewing the product, not the price!), but in my opinion worth the money. I've gone through about 8 of the NiCad battery packs: those start losing capacity right away and after a month or two of regular use you're back to charging them up twice a day. These lithium batteries go all day and more, even with heavy use. Combined with the nifty gauge, you won't find yourself up on a ladder or roof with a dead battery anymore (something that's annoyingly common with the NiCads in my experience).
These new Ryobi batteries are excellent.
* They power both the old and new Ryobi tool lines.
* They last provide more power (i.e. the tools work better) to both the old and new lines
* The charge from these batteries last much longer than the old batteries
* They also seem to keep a "full charge" and not lose the ability to fully charge like the old batteries did.
If you need to rely on your tools, you need to rely on your batteries. So far these have been great batteries and make the tools much more reliable.
Like others I started with the NiCd Ryobi ONE+ system and have multiples of many of the tools. I found the biggest drawback to the Ryobi NiCd (and most other NiCd batteries) is self discharge (after several months of use a charged battery would be completely dead after just a few days and needed recharging before it could be used). So, after buying another Ryobi kit with two Li-ion batteries I bought a third and was initially very happy with the results. Like others I didn't really see much run time difference and can't tell there's that much net weight difference, but I did (and still do) like the shelf life as there are few things more disappointing to me than picking up a cordless tool only to find the battery is dead. So far so good.
Now here's been my experience with these after 1-2 years of having them:
1) the charger starts reporting a defective battery and eventually reports each of my three batteries as defective. Fortunately unplugging and restarting the charge (sometimes multiple times) usually corrects the problem. This is certainly a relief compared to my DeWalt 36v batteries that just plain won't work once the charger says it's defective. Still it's annoying to leave a battery on charge to come back when you need it only to find that it hasn't been charged.
2) of the three P104 batteries I own, two are now 'weak'. Let me describe that. When running any tool (drill for example) the wind up is slower than the 'strong' battery and the torque is less. The weak batteries all seem to have about the same charge life though I haven't really done an experiment to confirm this. The fully charged unloaded voltage among the three are almost identical with a digital voltmeter, so I can't really explain the loss of torque other than maybe the internal resistance of the battery has increased.
Bottom line: These are pretty good grab and go battery/tool combinations for light to medium duty applications. The bateries are not perfect, but they are OK.
If I could give ZERO stars, this would certainly earn zero stars.
First the Li-ion charger. These things put out so much RF interference that you literally can't listen to AM or FM radio in your shop while charging a battery. Also, if you leave the battery plugged into the charger and remove power from the charger (mine is on a manual wind timer to save electricity) the charger DISCHARGES the battery in short order. I exchanged my first charger for a replacement, same exact problem. It is the design. I contacted Ryobi, they basically ignored me. I even emailed the FCC. Another joke but on a different blog.
Then there's the One+ Li-Ion Battery. My first one would run a tool for approximately half the time that the old Ni-Cad batteries would, then quit SUDDENLY, so I thought it was defective. I took it back to Home Depot, they exchanged it, and the new one was about the same. I decided to just keep it and consider it a lesson well learned. It soon failed altogether.
Wake up Ryobi. You have some good cordless tools, but you've laid an egg with these batteries and chargers. You need to not only fix the product, but fix your customers by recalling these things and replacing them with something that works.
I am a Ryobi fan. I have lots of their gear. The Li-Ion batter is (performance wise) a large step up from their previous 1+ battery. However, both of my batteries died two weeks after warranty expiration. Replacing the two batteries is very near the cost of another kit. (Which is how the sales guy sold me on the kit). Maybe it's like razor blades. - Lithium-ion - 18v Battery - 18v - Battery Pack'
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