Anybody tried the el cheapo lithium batteries?

I bought my lithium in 2022, and the company was "Ampere Time". It eventually became LiTime a year later. No frills, not even "low temp charging protection", which would have been a 50 dollar "upgrade" on what was already a 400 dollar battery. The battery is still going strong after 4 years, and on a recent test to determine what capacity it still holds, it came out to around 97 amp hours still available from the original 100 amp hours. (Take that test with a grain of salt, though!) LiTime, of course, became a huge brand seemingly overnight, with a huge array of products.

Many owners passed over the Battleborns that NuCamp was installing, especially because of the cost. The market for lithium batteries has expanded in ways most of us never imagined, and many owners have used batteries from companies that I had never heard of before. With all the review sites all around, and the way that reviewers tear apart batteries and show you what and how they are built, you can find many well built batteries from companies you might never hear of. The parts are fairly generic as far at the BMS's go, and the main differences are the cell types, and the manufacturing quality, such as welds and wiring, etc. The general feeling is: the batteries are "mostly" coming from the same basic China plants, with companies like WalMart, etc, asking those companies to build a battery for them or simply slap a Walmart sticker on an existing product.

The biggest cause of lithium failures (Will Prowse tells me so) is failures of the BMS boards in the lithium batteries. And, the failure percentage is apparently very low. I'm not sure if I would take one of the "less spendy" batteries out into an extreme environment (on a boat, for example) or try to push a "no name" battery to run a home or something, but for something as simple as our trailers, most lithium batteries will fit the bill. I agree with Grumpy: 2000 cycles is still much more than you might expect from a lead acid of the same Group Size, with more amp hours available, also.