Customer Reviews

Makita BL1830-2 18-Volt 3.0 AH Battery, 2-Pack

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

There is an intelligent circuit board inside the pack that needs to be powered, and it draws its power from the very cells it is monitoring.

The basic design flaw is that the circuit is wired to be powered by only one of the many cells in the pack. The board draws a constant although small current from that single cell. If the battery is not used for a few weeks then that cell will deep discharge causing a weak link in the bank of cells, the pack then fails in the charger.

Makita has programmed the circuitry so that if you try to charge the battery 3 times in this state, it will permanently disable it. Normal behavior is to think "why is it not charging, let me try again". If more than 1 year old, it is out of warranty.

Makita should step up, redesign the battery, and offer on their website to replace any batteries which have not been abused with the new design.

I would not buy any more Makita tools powered by this battery.

These batteries are a great value because they last a lot longer than other 18V batteries. I have crews using these tools for metal framing and such and the less time they spend getting down off of scaffolds looking for a charged battery, the more money I save. I personally used the 18V driver to install 18 sheets of Durock and I went thru over 300 fasteners on a single charge. I kept reaching for more fasteners wondering when the battery would go dead and it just kept on going. The 3 amp hour design is awesome. In this case, I say you get what you pay for...and maybe a little bit more.

I love these batteries and the tools they power. They deliver more energy than my other brand 18 volt tools. The Makita smart charger charges them in 20 minutes. Wow, great battery! I should be happy, right? Partly I am, but partly I'm not. I am concerned about the huge number of premature failures people are reporting here and in the single BL1830 battery reviews. There's a problem and Makita is ignoring it.

I did a lot of research on the net about this. My conclusion: this battery has design flaw that shuts down these batteries prematurely. It won't happen to everyone, but if the battery sits discharged for a long time, it's very likely to happen.

Background: Lithium batteries can burn or explode if abused. They need monitoring, for safety reasons. So like everyone, Makita put in a smart control board in the battery pack. The control board monitors charging voltage, current, battery temperature, number of charges, and remembers all that. Sounds good, right? But.. there is a design bug. The battery control board draws power only from the first cell of the 5 cells in the battery. If you leave it sitting for a while, the control board will discharge that first cell to zero, while the others remain charged. To the control board or possibly the charger, that looks like a shorted cell, which could overheat, and the control board remembers it. If you try to charge it 3 times with an apparently deep discharged cell, sudden death! The control board tells the charger that the battery is unsafe to charge, and prevents charging in the Makita charger -- permanently.

The key evidence is the apparent dead cell is usually that first cell, the one that powers the control board. Very likely the battery is still usable. It can probably be recharged on third party chargers that ignore the control board -- but never again on a Makita charger. If you have a dead battery, you could try to charge it on an aftermarket charger. They cost about $50, a lot less than a new battery.

If you read the reviews for the single BL1830 battery, you will see that a lot of customers, about 1/3, are angry about these premature failures. Makita has extended the warranty if the battery fails before 150 charges, admitting they know about the problem. It's not enough. We should not have to deal with premature failures caused by a known design defect. Who has time on the job, and who has money to throw away?

I can think of many ways to fix this. For example, Makita could reprogram the battery control board or charger so it did not lock up a good battery, or the control board could draw power from all 5 cells so this is less likely to happen to a single cell, or use a separate coin cell for the control board, or ... well, as you can see there are many possible ways to address this. My point is that Makita's engineers need to pick a solution and fix this problem.

As I said, I really do love these batteries and tools. But this serious problem has been identified, and it needs to be fixed. In my opinion, Makita should recall these batteries and fix this problem, and release a better battery design for new sales. If not, Makita's reputation will continue to suffer, and there could be a class action lawsuit too. Makita is infuriating customers and destroying its reputation.

I have used a lot of different tools/batteries. These outlast all the guys at work who are using dewalt. The batteries actually make a cordless sawszaw a useful tool. Even my boss was impressed. The only draw back is they are not cheap, but you get what you pay for.

There appears to be a serious design flaw with these batteries that can be researched on the net. The result is you may only get 1 year of use from these batteries. I have about $1000 of the LXT tool line. These are good tools who's value IMHO is seriously diminished because of a battery design fault. I purchased these tools about 1.5 years ago with one battery. I purchased a second battery about 1 year ago. They were lightly used for weekend projects and I stored them indoors and charged. One battery died in February and the other died in July. So they each lasted about one year each. I'm shocked! I purchased the Makita cordless line because I still have a 21 year old 12v Makita cordless drill that works like the day I got it. Two years ago I took apart our 12x20ft deck, refinished it and reassembled it with the 12v drill. I managed to reassemble about 95% of the deck on one battery charge!! amazing! I still have it and it still works great with the original batteries that are almost 22 years old now. So, I decided to go with Makita LXT line when I wanted to upgrade to more cordless tools. However, I use and store the new tools the same as the old tool and the new batteries both died in about 1 year. Many others are reporting this problem. The LXT line are good tools with lots of variety but I'd SERIOUSLY think before investing in these tools due to the defective batteries. They failed when I really needed them and am basically stuck spending serious money as they fail to keep using the tools I have. Makita - you really screwed up.

if clothes make the man these batteries make the tool. just don,t leave the battery in the tool when you put then in the bag that the tools came in. the sligest touch to the trigger and the lite stays on and the battery willl be drained when you go to use it.

Like others in the reviews, I bought a combo coming with 2 batteries. This was sept 2010. The first one fail after 1 months and a half. Amazon was helpfull to replace it. In the same time, I bought another one, having then 3 working batteries (just precaution). About a year later, another failed !!! Same as described by other review.
How can, on 3 batteries, having 2 failures ? I'm not the one complaining for having once a lemon. It can happen.
But this time it is not just "bad luck" but "bad product".
The tool and the system is great. The time to recharge is perfect. I had even bought the grinder and others.
I have still a Ryobi for now 7 years, on 18 volts (just one battery) and this is still working without any problem.
How can makita going under the quality of Ryobi ?
My recommendation. Stay away from this tool until they change the design of the batteries ! At nearly 80 USD each,
this is a very expensive way if you have to change them every 6 months !!!

These are my 5th and 6th batteries. One and four died withen the first two years contrary to the extended service life that manufacturer markets them as. Two things to remember do not use these when they are hot and do Not run them down like we use to with ni cad batteries. Li-ion batteries have no memory except if you mistreat them. If they get hot or too low on power they will be very short lived. The charger does a great job of cooling them down and charging them up. Leaving them on the charger till the fan turns off seems to be the best way to keep them alive longer. Feel free to just rotate them onto the charger all the time. Infact keep one on the charger all the time and you will get max life and best use out of these batteries. Once the battery's energy lvl is visibly slowed or sounds slow throw them on the charger. Also if you're going to store them for a weekend or a month make sure they are fully charged they really like to be charged up and kept cool. leaving them in the sun is also very bad. Heat = death of a $70 dollar battery.

These along with any of the tools made by Makita are the best on the market. I have used Makita's 14.4 Nicd stuff for years and actually sold them to a buddy and he is still using and lovin them.
Thank you Makita keep up the good work.

These batteries are important if you own a makita li-ion set. With the supplied two batteries you have to switch a single battery among the tools you are using while the second battery is charging, agrhh. This was very annoying when you are trying to make money on the job site. Armed with four batteries you can run three tools while one is charging, now you can make money!