12V 300AH Smart LiFePO4 Battery, Built-in 200A BMS, 2000+ Cycles

Too early to tell about longevity and battery life as I've just installed it and camping season is a couple of months away. It took me a while to fabricate the setup for a new battery box on my trailer tongue as I don't have a lot of room between the propane bottles and the trailer body. The 200ah battery fits in an 8D battery box with a little room on all sides. I insulated the box quite a bit on all 6 sides so it'll hold up better for cold weather charging. One concern was whether it had enough cold cranking amps to start my 4,000 watt Onan generator. The BMS says 600A for "less than 5 seconds". I didn't log the inrush current draw when I tested out the generator start but it did start my generator without any noticeable problems once I got the system primed with fuel. I'll be changing out my converter to one that has a LiFePo4 charging profile sometime between now and Spring as well as changing out my solar charge controller for the same reason. My trailer is a 2016 and neither the converter nor solar charge controller have Lithium compatible charging profiles. I'll upgrade both in order to be able to charge to 100%. Nice weight savings, the 2 x 100ah flooded lead/acid batteries I had previously installed were over150 lbs between the two of em. This one is under 50 lbs and theoretically I'll get 2X the usable watt/hours. It was super handy to put a couple of aluminum buss bars on the terminals to create 4 mounting points on each electrode, I didn't want to stack up multiple connectors on the one battery terminal. So far so good, time will tell to see how the thousands of cycles play out in a real world environment, but I'm fairly confident this battery will support boondocking for 6-7 days before recharging with my typical usage. Couple months later now. The battery didn’t hardly discharge at all in storage. Only lost 1% SOC over 3 months of storage. Plugged into my tow vehicle, 25 amps came in from the truck for a couple of minutes until the BMS shut down the incoming charge current. My 200 watt solar array was adding about 90 watts of incoming charge current in the indirect, morning sunlight. Bluetooth app is a little quirky and minimally featured. If you walk far enough away from the battery, you lose connection. You have to then kill the app and launch it again to reestablish Bluetooth connectivity. So far so good. I’ll know more after a short trip this weekend on how well they discharge and top off from solar panels during typical usage.After a few months now:Capacity should keep me going for 8-10 days boondocking without any incoming charge. That said, my 200w solar array will bring in up to 120-150 watts during a good sunny day and will bring the battery back up to 99% SOC in a few hours. The updated 110v/12v converter will supply up to 57 amps and will bring this battery back up to high SOC in short order. So plugged into commercial power or running my generator will supply a huge charge current. The legacy solar charge controller is set to an AGM profile as mine is old enough to not have a LiFePo4 profile, but after a day of solar charging it brings the battery up to high SOC no problem, I'll not upgrade to a newer one until this one dies. So far, I've not seen my SOC drop below 85% as there's been enough sun every few days to top the battery off, or I've towed the trailer and it's gotten topped off from the truck, or I've run the generator for a little bit. So far quite happy with the upgrade.After more than 18 months installed I’m still mostly happy. I’m only showing 5 or 6 charge cycles due to hardly ever dropping below 90% SOC before daylight shows up and the solar panels start recharging. The only negative is the 100 amp BMS. I’ve recently added a 2000 watt inverter and I’ll never get max power out of it due to being limited by the 100 amp BMS. If I was to do it over again I’d buy their 300 AH battery with the 200 amp BMS. the other issue, not their fault is the crazy price drop. I paid $900 for the 200 AH smart battery, now the 300 AH battery is $700. I’m seriously considering selling this battery locally and ordering the 300 AH smart battery.

First, my use case:I am using the 100Ah "smart" version of this battery to power 12V DC and 120V AC systems for my overland trailer. I usually charge the battery using a 120W solar panel, but also can plug into shore power for rapid charging.Other background:I'm an electrical engineer and I researched *a lot* of batteries before choosing this one. This battery had all the features I wanted at a very competitive price point, including a robust BMS, built-in bluetooth, app-based SOC monitoring, and a self-heating function for cold-weather use. I seriously considered similar batteries from Renogy and Battle Born, but those options were much more expensive and didn't (at the time) have all the same features.How the battery has performed:This battery punches above its weight. I'm currently powering a 2,000W Renogy inverter with just one 100Ah CHINS battery. In theory, I shouldn't be doing that, but I wanted to really put the battery to the test before investing in a second one (the system I've built has three bays for a total of 300Ah of capacity).I've pulled 70A+ peak and 50A+ sustained current from the battery to run power tools off my trailer. This has expanded its utility from just camping and fun to actually working as a solar-charged power station for small projects around my property. I've run circular saws, table saws, and shop vacs all day long with the SOC barely dipping below 85%. This is partly because the battery and inverter are very efficient, but also because I position the trailer to maximize solar efficiency when I'm working on a project.This past weekend was my first chance to try out the battery while camping at a State Park in a heavily shaded campsite with no electrical hook-up. I ran a 60W electric cooler ("car refrigerator") continuously for four days. Daytime temperatures were in the 80s, evenings in the 40s and 50s. Two families (seven people) charged cell phones/tablets/etc. regularly over the course of the weekend. With no solar input, the battery still never dipped below 60% SOC and actually charged on the way home back up to 70%+ while still running the cooler.I'm pretty sure I could stretch my trailer to run as-is for a week of boondocking (with solar input) on just one battery. I plan to add a second CHINS battery this summer and possibly a third. The third battery will make my rig a backup power option for home power outages.Finally, on top of making a great product CHINS sent me a FREE (no strings attached, read the Q&A section on Amazon to learn more, if still available) 10A DC charger, which I plugged in for the first time this morning, just to try it out. The unit they sent is basic, but supposedly designed to work with their "smart" batteries. Connecting it to the battery, it immediately put out 10A as expected (the battery was at ~90% SOC) and brought the battery to 100% SOC in just over an hour.CHINS has exceeded my expectations in every way.***10/5/22 UPDATE***I went for it and expanded my overland battery system from one CHINS battery to three over the summer. I finally finished connecting the third battery in parallel last month (see review photo). I added batteries one at a time, working with CHINS to make sure the batteries I got were running the same generation of BMS/app, since the tech inside these is constantly evolving. CHINS was extremely responsive and helpful throughout the process.Each time I added a battery, I used the following steps:1. Disconnect the solar array2. Disconnect the inverter3. Top up/charge the existing bank using my CHINS 10A DC charger4. Top up/charge the new battery using my CHINS 10A DC charger5. Check battery voltages to make sure they are within a couple of tenths of a volt of each other6. Connect the batteries in parallel, using heavy-duty 1/0 AWG gauge cables7. Reconnect the inverter8. Reconnect the solar arrayThe batteries work flawlessly together. It took a few cycles of partial discharge and recharge for them to fully sync up. After about a month of use, the charge level across the batteries stabilized and has remained uniform since.Before connecting my batteries into a single bank, I also tested one of them as a replacement for the trolling motor battery on my boat. I have a 12V DC trolling motor that pulls about 20A of current at the top speed setting. The CHINS battery ran the trolling motor like a champ all day long.I continue to be impressed with these batteries.