when the duracells are on sale at Sams is the best deal you will find. Group 27s for $69 apiece and then I replace them after 2 years when they run the sale again. with that being said the group 29 Everstart might be the best battery ever made.

Our Walmart

Group 31 Duracell's for Start, T/M and Electronics. Been 3 years no problems. If you have a smart charger, keep them plugged in 24/7 when not in use.

Flooded lead acid batteries are the way to go for the amount of power delivered per dollar. The drawback is that I have to check and add water about twice a year and I get roughly 2-3 years of life out of them. I keep my two boats plugged in when they're off the water and I average around 450 hours a year between the two. I use deep cycles for trolling and dual purpose for starting to handle the charging/discharging cycles. I don't use starting/cranking batteries any more because of the draw from the electronics.

East Penn and Clarios (formerly Johnson Controls Power Division) manufacture the bulk of the battery brands on the US market today, including DieHard, Interstate, Duracell, Everstart, Deka, Autocraft, and others. Folks are brand loyal and I get it, but I don't think it matters as much as it used to now that the differences don't amount to much more than just a sticker. I've been using the Duracells from Sam's because they tend to give me the least amount of hassles with warranty issues although they did try to charge me Tuesday night for the price increase from when I purchased the battery in 2019.

I see that Ionic has lowered their price so I think I'm going with their lithium my next round of replacements.

You just got me to go do a sanity check! LOL Mine are 1 year and for sure and the 2 years have never been in stock at the walmarts I shopped at. El paso one sucks but the one at my home lake will have 1 or 2 more models than my local one....but i know for sure they all had 1 year warranty. If i can get a 2 year warranty (even though mine lasted over 2 years) i might just pull the trigger on them. It is pretty cool to be able to go fish lots of places and likely be an hour or less away from a walmart to do a switchout if needed.

I don’t know man, ours has always had these 2 year ones. I don’t know why we would get something different, but several of you guys have said they only had 1 year ones, so I believe y’all. Must be some kind of market location deal. I can say this, the 2 year $99 battery, sure made it hard to go to lithium. But the lithiums are so much easier on the shoulders and arms when installing, hopefully they really last 11 years like the warranty claims.



(I have been averaging 3+ years on the everstarts)

I had perfectly fine Everstarts for my TM and a X2 for cranking, all only a year old. Previous owner put them in shortly before I bought my current rig. Last month I pulled the trigger on a full set of lithium's from Ionic. Was thinking at first I was wasting money and should run them till they die first but after the first time on the water with the Ionics I don't regret it one bit.

WHat do yall use for just electronics? I have my helix 15,10, & 8 wired to their own battery and am needing to get a new one. Any suggestions?

Bust that credit card out and get that 125, you know you want it.

Same....but mine are going on 2 years.

Same for me, for the price difference of the 100 vs 125, go bigger. No, I’m not rich and it hurts a little or a lot, lol!
Will need to have a lithium spec’d charger though. You could save some money getting the Amazon lithium’s, but I’ll pay the extra for potential warranty issues and have a person to contact. (Drewcraft.com) The ionic batteries (100 & 125) also have starting battery BMS, which could fire up the big motor if needed. I would imagine a 15” helix pulls quite a few amps.


I originally bought a 50ah and killed it too quickly with 3 graphs.

The Walmart battery above offers 122ah (allegedly), so budget wise it would win for the budget minded angler.

I went with 3 50's, a 125 and Ionic charger. For my 125 its my cranking/electronics battery. 250SHO, 2 Helix 12's, and a Helix 10 all networked along with a Garmin 1222 and livescope. First time out was in a tourny a few weeks ago. I launched at 630 and fished till 3 only starting big motor twice for a few minutes to move a short distance. I purposely left all my graphs on the whole time along with livewells and even used the poles a couple of time. At end of the day it was showing 62% and 13.1 volts.

I run a 12volt Minn Kota Terrova. I am thinking of switching to Lithium because I think it will give me longer run time on spot lock on a windy day. My current Everstart deep cycle starts to run down after about 4 hours on a windy day. If that is not a valid assumption then I would be better off staying with a $99 everstart and replacing it every couple years if need be.

Those of you that have changed to lithium, does the battery stay stronger longer than the lead acid battery?

Thanks

With lithium you have full power, right up until it’s completely dead. But when it’s dead, it’s dead! In that situation, I’d make sure to get one with Bluetooth monitoring, to keep from being stranded.

Thanks for the reply. Will I have 'full powe'r significantly longer with Lithium than I do with the lead acid?