The new 12v batteries in Lidl UK stores this week have "cell balancing - longer battery life. Increased lifespan" written on both the 2ah and the 4ah packs

Looking forward to you testing the individual cells, Julian.

only person i have heard talking about the balancing of the cells.. thanks for that..

I bought Parkside's cordless drill a few years back and its been superb, am surprised the batteries haven't gone yet either as its had a fair few down to the red indicator then charged and over the years and it holds the charge for ages with little dribble of max potential. I have the 20v pack for my Parkside impact driver and that too can be left for months and still be fully charged. I don't know what they use in the Parkside dremel kit but had one of them for coming up two years and apart from a bit noisy at full steam again holds charge without loss in between uses but I haven't seen the dremel tool battery's come up in Lidl's as I would buy another. Parkside is quite unusual in that most of its stuff is still made in Germany rather than some oblique factory in Shenzuen which is becoming a rarity in electrical tools.

I have a parkside cordless drill and a few years ago after little use one cell went out of balance to about 3.6 volt while the other cells (2) where both at about 4.2 volt When put on the charger it said it was full after a few seconds but then put in the drill it said it was empty! I took it apart and measured the voltages of each cell and charged one cell (the 3.6 volt one) with a li-ion single cell charger by connecting wires from the charger to that single cell and after putting it back together and using it for a few years now and many charge/discharge cycles I can say it seems to have worked, the drill works as it should and charging when it's empty is as normal a couple of hours till full

Great vid with interesting info I can vouch for how good Lidl's customer service is....I had a small 12v 2 amp (the single stick pack) drill/driver that after 2 years 10 months of heavyish use started splitting at the back....the 2 halves were coming apart ...tightening the screws didnt help so must be stripped threads in the plastic...it worked but was stuck in 1 speed as switch wouldnt move. I rang them up (keep receipt) and they sent me a new one inc case and battery and said keep old one :) yep nearly 3 years old! (still using it)......great service Have done quite a few reviews of their tools on my channel.

Just bought one to open up and use for the cells. And it looks to me like they Are balanced. Each cell is monitored by the board and thus possibly balance as well? Also. Has anyone found a data sheet on these cells?

Interesting vid, as I've just bought one of those Parkside drill/drivers, (I've just done a review of it on my channel), seems to be well made & ideal for smaller jobs, instead of getting out the mains powered drill. I've just dismantled an old summerhouse in the garden, using the screwdriver function , the battery is still showing full charge! I was tempted to have a look inside the battery pack, you've saved me the trouble of doing that! I'm surprised at the amount of charge control circuitry in the actual battery pack, I thought most of it would have been in the charger itself. I've bought several of Lidl's mains power tools over the last few years & not had any real problems with them, The 'florabest' lawnmower is on its fifth season & still going strong! Just subscribed btw!

Today Lidl are selling 20v 2ah drill batteries for 11.99 which is a good buy. Plus on thingyverse you can find 3d designs that allow you to convert them to other battery types. ive done one that converts it to work with an einhell drill, you just need to cut up a tin to make two contacts which are pushed into the 3d print at the end

Holy moly, I haven't heard Googlewhack since I saw Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure more than a decade ago.

Good video Julian. Quick question, and perhaps you may not have the answer. But I have some older (2017/18) Parkside tools which use the 12V batteries however, when compared to the latest batteries, the terminals are swapped around. i.e. my battery has + on the left, whereas the new batteries have + on the right. Do you know, if I were to strip down a new battery and swap the + and - spade terminals with each other, so the terminals would then match my current, older battery configuration, would that enable them to work in my tools? Thanks

I bought a couple of the larger packs but without the riser - they only have five cells per pack. No matter...I just wanted some reasonable cells with spot welded tabs so that I could try rebuilding a couple of Hitachi 10.8V packs (only 1500mah). Worked a treat! The Hitachi packs are thoughtfully designed - unsolder a few wires and the three cells can be removed without having to hack into the frame (unlike the Parkside packs). Very pleased with the results - so thanks for the heads up!

I've had mine just over a year. Charged it up and when I went to use it, it was dead. I opened the pack, the cells seem to show over 4 volts, but when I check the connector voltage it's 7ish and drops quickly to below 5 and keeps going down below 4.

They were still at full price in my local Lidl, but the manager said they may go down on Thursday.

A thought that struck me with the duel voltage cell, would it loose balance on the cells if its used for ages on a 12v unit then used on a 20v tool?

4 years ago I bought two 22400mAh powerbanks (8 cells) for £12.99 each on Amazon. I should have bought more since the price per cell was so low that its hard to find them at that price even these days.

Hi i live in the Same city really funny to see the first time something from my city in your hand 😁

Did anyone discomnect the batteries from the BMS and reconnwct them? Does the battery pack still work then or does it have a kill switch so it stops working?

Negative must be only in the draining devices. Some battery protections are made in a way that they charge through one pin and discharge through another.

Hello!! Do you think it's doable to get 18650 batteries with bigger capacity and put them on the drill?? Thank you!

Balncing is not problem when You use device to heavy job's. Please notice that the much of expensive device like Makita also don't have balncing system. However when You check each cells after year using, You can see that each cells have the same voltage to 0.001 volt.is isvery interesting phenomen

The battery has B + and B contacts - what is the 3rd TP contact for? Thermistor or reference voltage?

Does the tools work without the ID chip ?

Hello! My question is how long do they keep their charge, that is, how long will it stay charged?

These cells are really good and cheap. I stripped the 18volt batteries when they were reduced took the cell holders with cells out trimmed off any excess plastic and stacked them 5 layers high connected them in parallel and put that back in the case with threaded rods instead of the original screws to make to 2 18 volt 10 amp wrapped them in heat shrink. Connected these to batteries in series for my 36 volt electric bike conversion. They work fantastic.

What would be a way to make this charge in a charger from another brand that has 3 pins(t,+,-)

Over the last couple of years there have been various 12V tools on offer from Lidl. However while the general form factor of the battery has stayed the same, there have been minor subtle changes in the battery shape and in the tool battery receptacle areas. The outcome of this is that batteries which are the same approximate form factor and the same voltage are not interchangeable. Likely a deliberate ploy on Lidl’s part.

Hi Julien. I'm trying to convert my parkside performance power tools to run on my Hikoki/Hitachi 18v batteries. I have loads of the hitachi batteries but no parkside just the bare tools. The parkside has plus/minus and and a 3rd connector. the Hitachi batteries has plus/minus and the following.C+, T, LS, T. V, LD How do I go about it? Thanks

Now that you have the 6 high-discharge cells and 4x 5.8milliohm fets, you could make a nice little inverter capable of 50 watts for and hour, 500 watts peak.

I think end of the day that modern cells just don't get that far out of balance that it is worth worrying about, as long as they are well matched for capacity and charge state when they are series'd up. If a cell gets very out of balance with the others the pack is faulty or on it's last legs anyway so just using protection and reducing the capacity a bit seems quite reasonable. Balancing adds a lot of complexity.

Could be that they are relying on top balancing. My guess is that they set the over volt setting at an reasonable voltage. You said the chip could turn off the charging fet for each cell when the over volt trips. This should bring them reasonably close to each other, should it not?

It seems that there are 12 Volt Parkside tools, which won't work with the smaller 2 Ah batteries. So, the tools use this ID Pin.

Julian, I believe the method that is used is to short all the +'s together and all the -'s together so any cell that tried to undervolt is pulled up by virtue of being connected to the other cells. I know when I first saw this method I was somewhat stumped and even wrote to some manufactures about it, but it seems to be an accepted industry standard now not to balance cells as used to be done, but as I said to crowbar clamp the cells to one another. But when the cells are in series I am still very concerned that an overvolt situation could arise and cause a fire by overcharging.

Does anybody know if the "T" contact is used by the drill or just the charger. I have it in mind to use a 2Ah battery to revive an old NiCd drill whose battery pack has failed. The drill uses only two contacts, so I eed to know if transplanting the Li-Ion batteries and controller will continue to work if the T contact is not connected. I will need to adapt the charger to make it charge through "T" of course.

I got a couple dozen LG cells, 6 for $10 or less that way, only 1.5ah, but can do 40amps, about 24 cells. Not so bad for new cells, I guess I'm going to replace nickel cells in my dewalt drill, I wonder if it will handle 6s cells? 24v being 18v components??

LOL, I despise those Plastic Blister Packs. Some how I end up sliced and dice bleeding getting into the dang things.

I dropped my 12v 4amp parkside battery the bigger one and it won't charge now any ideas how to fix it?

the art of war quotes Santa Clase is that high

Just came across this video and i thought let's ad this new info in the comments. In the probably newer charger are 3 connections(marked as +,C-, and iD wich is the button connection in the middle same on the 4 aH battery), and the cells are marked as Parkside INR18650E(i would guess rebranded Samsung cells).

the cells stay balanced, or at least they do on the 20v packs. I think some of these cheaper ones go for midpoint balancing... stopping charge as soon as any battery hits 4.2 and stopping discharge as soon as any hits 2.8, this way capacity is slightly reduced but keeps evryone safe. would be interesting @julian if you knock a cell out of balance to see if the pack recovers on these ''simpler'' packs, that said, they look a lot better designed than the ferrex packs from aldi.

Is that T an upside down ⊥ (ground symbol)?

I thought they where balanced, if it checks the cells over voltage parameters (each pair of cells) and the under voltage bit, surely that is balancing ?

Great teardown.. I bought tool without battery and the store doesn't have batteries in yet 😂 .. Looking at this, mech modding tool is def out of question., or hooking it up to power adapter (matching amps and voltage).. Still really want to try adapter ..

It could be a 1m ohm resistor used as a current shunt.

T is charging port+ is common positive and - is drain negative. Drain negative gets cut off at 2.5v per cell, T gets cut off when cell reaches 4.2v. in my opinion very good design, battery is protected, basically controlls charging with its bms and just gives + and - to tools to use

ohh also try a UV light on the cell cases for hidden lettering

I don't think any of these cheaper Li-ion batteries do any kind of balancing. I have some Draper batteries, identical to an Aldi tool system. I have had two packs die now (all draper, none of the aldi interestingly), when I took them apart it was clear that is a simple series circuit with some overvoltage/overheat protection but that's all. In both packs it was one cell that was faulty, then likely overcharged by the other cells and then failed.

Hey Julian, Great video, very informative. If you decide to use the cells for a different project, would you consider donating the plastics from the 4Ah battery to me as i dropped my drill with one of those in and the casing has cracked on the top part and the triangular part.

Does this bms board can use for juts 3 cell

My understanding was a googlewhack is a search which only returns a single result. Enjoyed Dave Gormans book and power point presentation on the subject some years ago.

Have you looked at MR Dyson's offering ? Built like a tank

3 x 3.6V batteries equal a 12V tool eh? Love when the marketing teams get involved.

Would like to know if they turn out to be any good though.

so after doing a full charge then putting it on my dummy load @4amps and cut off at 8.4v (2.8v per cell) we got 3990mah. pretty dam good. just need a data sheet for the max charge/discharge rate

the diode is in a SOT1289 package, might be a schottky like PMEG045V150EPD

If these cells were balanced there should be some kind of a device (like mosfet) to switch on and off each cell individually.

You sound like Julian Clary!! Thanks for your great videos

I have never seen a clearance tag that said cheaper

Have you checked the capacities of those cells yet?

Edit: Removed most of my previous junk 'cos I noticed... the charger has access to the batteries individually through those metal tabs. It's almost certain that the charger has the balancing circuit. I guess the idea is that you are forced to charge the battery packs using "their" charger, for safety. Which seems very unsafe to me, since it's far safer to have the balancing circuit in the battery pack than in the charger. Still, it's possibly cheaper, and it will work so long as you always use the correct charger, or at least a charger which includes a balance charge circuit.

Does anyone know if they work with Milwaukee m12

Can that button be an identification chip using the 1-Wire protocol? It looks like those id tags with a small metal can that use 1-Wire. EDIT: 1-Wire iButton.

Fascinating the economics of 18650 cells. You are buying assembled units for less per cell than I can usually find the individual batteries. How can prices move in such strange ways? The cheapest I have found are the low capacity £1 units from Poundland, but otherwise they are usually over £2 each even if bought at 6 cells at the same time with the every concerning knowledge that what one is being sold might be a low capacity counterfeit. Has buying batteries ever been so Weird? Thanks for sharing!

18650 batteries are pretty cheap now. Do lithium ion batteries require balancing i though that was a nicad thing.

Thanks, I hope you have answered my problem. I connect with a cable to my boat 12v lead acid battery, runs for ages. So far been using a very old 12v drill. Recently got. Parkside mini angle grinder, what a useful tool. It was marked + and - . Just got a multi tool annoyingly not marked, but I can see from you video which way round. The angle grinder I could just push a spade type connector over the contact. The multi tool connector is bent over at the end, probably needs soldering.

I use the larger 24V Lidl packs on many older NiCad power tools, cost nowt and it's ni on allways the NiCads that go way before the tool :)

I hit Lidl's yesterday for some cans of cellulose thinners and several of their precision screwdriver sets grabbing one set good enough for watch level work and another couple for electronic level of work, all ratchet bit handles and very pleased at the quality. They had their cheap soldering iron sets in again with the little "station" that holds spare tips and has the spring thing to park the iron, for £8 its not a bad starter kit imho :)

Bosch doesn't balance their powertool batteries' cells either.

A lot of laptop battery packs are also not balanced. That is the most common design. There should be a law against that.

Most power tool packs and laptop packs are not balanced. The cells are paired for capacity and internal resistance at the factory. Perfectly normal, and not missing anything :)

Just noticed: on the battery it says PAPK 12V A1 Which means they are old type non-balancing. Although the package says PAPK 12V B1 which ARE balanced type! This is probably why they give them away on such action price. Manufacturing error.

i have an almost identical (pcb is different) battery (small) but is 10.8 volt 3 cell , it does charge to over 12 volt but the charger , battery and tool all day 10.8 volt :-) interesting to know it has no balancing , mine is in bits atm because it runs out quick so something new to check :-)

5 year in light use, no problem with battery pack.

Are these compatible with the previous gen batteries?

Why does it look like the Grizzly stamp was added after the tape? lettering looks just as dark and legible where the tape is.

the cells are samsung cells

👍👍👍🙂🤝

Won't the cells be balanced after a discharge / charge cycle ? What's the point of dissipating in the battery pack ?

Question is - ARE YOU ACTUALLY GETTING the capacity written on the cells? The chenglish translation for 5mAh can be anything up to 3.6Ah. I remember well the sand filled cells from a few years ago. You could do with running a couple up and down a couple of times to see what reality says - ink is cheap at Aldi! That scottish poundshop warrior (BC) shows time and again the worth of battery ratings. If they are genuine they are a good deal.

Roughly Milwaukee M12 clones

Does anyone know if the ID terminal is only connected to the "T" by a resistor, or it has some other connection also to the PCB or to the battery cell? I wanna use such a battery pack for somethig else, and I don't know if I need to bother about this terminal or not when charging (for sure not during discharging, as the power tool doesn't use this terminal). BTW, my charger has a counter terminal, a kind of telescopic pin that is contacting the ID terminal of the battery. This pin is on +8V to the "T" terminal in the charger. Thanks for any feedback!

A ‘googlewhack’ as popularised by Dave Gorman usually means a term which gives a unique (and correct) result when given to google search ... rather than nil results.

Quite odd that the printing on the cells is over the tape.

👍

Yeah… don’t force these into the older parkside 12v dremel-style tool having paid no attention that they’re a different battery series… They fit… and then the tool lets the smoke out from being fed reverse voltage! Time to build a new PWM circuit for the speed controller 😂

Julian, if you want cheap cells, you can just buy cheap cells. No need to look for special offers, discounts, surprise boxes, waste time and effort to disassemble, get cells with spikes after removing spot welded tabs, cut yourself, void warranty and gets stuck with overdischarged cells or cells of unknown characteristics. It's too much trouble for nothing unless you do it out of surprise addiction. 1.75 pounds is 1.95 euro. As an example, look for Sanyo UR1865ZL2 2310mAh - 10A at eu dot nkon dot nl. It's 1.99 euro.

Balancing takes time ... the average consumer isn't patient enough to wait.

Do yall have sales tax and if so how much is it

Thanks julian I have just contributed to global warming, all due to a wasted trip to Lidl at no reduction prices in Cheltenham and no larger packs in stock. Lidl say the price marked is what you pay, they say they don't have any other store tel numbers so I could check elsewhere. USELESS not you but Lidl. Keep up the cell hunting as they need to be about 75p- £1.00 range for 2000ma then things would change big time everyone wants them . Years ago I stupidly thought you could by a 7000mAh 18650 HA HA and now some are selling 9000mAh that's a bomb. Thanks for the hard work!

Most Parkside stuff is rebranded popular named equipment often from the same producers who have agreed to produce there equipment for Lidle. They often cost 1/3 or 1/4 less. A good example is the Parkside petrol 1200 watt generator which is a rebranded Hyundai generator. It's also branded with Sceppach and zipper. Parksides one is £80 cheaper then the zipper one.

eu.nkon.nl is a good source for batteries as well

W wkrętarce parkside performance jest zabezpieczenie które powoduje że ona nie pracuje poniżej 5 stopni celsjusza,może potrafił byś je znaleźć i pokazać jak je usunąć,był by to bardzo dobry filmy , !!

"Googlewhack" another Julianism destined for the Oxford English Dictionary. We live in exciting times...

I get my 18650 batts $8 for a set of 8...brand new Samsung for a buck a piece :)

They're junk I have several and they keep changing the fitting so they can't be used on different items.

You have extreme low prices in UK. we also had these packs in our LIDL stores (Denmark) the 2Ah with also Grizzly cells cost 99 DKK (12 GBP) and the 4Ah also with Grizzly cells was 179 DKK (22GBP) i.imgur.com/z95v8Wz.png so shockingly fare from the MSRP before sale price. and batteries will never come on sale here... just as many of these LIDL tools are not carried here. The only two was the 12vdrill and the 12v multitool for these batteries a few weeks back there both costed 349DKK (42 GBP.) These tools cost 29Euro in Germany and 25GBP in the UK as I recall. Not sure what the reason is why the LIDL Germany (aka Schwarz group) set the prices here so much higher than all our neighboring countries..as they are the only one..even though they are not little here with a triple-digit number of stores. Aldi has the same prices in Denmark as our neighboring countries, so seem weird that LIDL inflate them as much, but the biggest problem is the very little selection of these tools, so if you buy a product with battery and charger, you are often not gonna get the chance for the other power tools that battery lineup also would work in. LIDL Denmark got a very low score amongst the public... bad leadership.

Balancing and cheap charger doesn't go together. For simple charging you just use full current until one cell reaches it's maximum. If you want to balance you would then have to switch the charger into a lower current mode, unless you are fine with each of the balancing resistors to have a heatsink to dissipate 5-10 Watts. To switch to a lower current you would need some kind communication between the charger and the battery pack. And that will make things complicated and expensive, even if it were just a single on/off pin telling the charger to switch to another mode.

HI Julian. Nice try, but the company is German not French, so the pronunciation for GmbH is more "Gay Emm Bay Hah" (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung - it's the old 'company with limited liability' thing). :-)

They probably do that so most will need to buy new battery packs, when one cell gets low and shuts the pack down!

those boards are two sided