Test/review of Soshine 9V LiFePO4 320mAh (White)

Soshine 9V LiFePO4 320mAh (White)







Official specifications:

  • Chemie: LiFePO4

  • Size: 9V 6F22

  • Model No.: Fe-9.6V-320

  • Nominal Voltage (V): 9.6 ,charged 10.8V

  • Height (mm): 47.9

  • Diameter(mm): 16, 8x 26,5

  • Weight: 35g




This battery has 3 LiFePO4 cells in series and a protection circuit.
It looks like the protection circuit only works for over discharge where it trips at about 6.4V. On charging I tested up to 12V without triggering any protection, it may be because the protection circuit is for 4.2V LiIon.
The numbers is from the good battery, not an average between the two cells.



Here are the numbers for the bad battery.










Usual a 9V battery has flat sides, but one of these did expand a bit during tests.



The good battery has about 230mAh, not very impressive for a 320mAh rated battery. Voltage is fairly high as expected.











Conclusion

LiFePO4 batteries are low capacity, but with 3 cells in series it has considerable more voltage than most 9V types.
I am not really impressed with the lower than rated capacity and one defective battery.



Notes and links

How is the test done and how to read the charts
Compare to other 9V batteries: Alkaline/NiMH/Lithium/other

Thank You for the test. It is a Just-in-Time review for me considering my story below.


In Febrary I bought one LiFePo4 9V battery from the seller in Barkutis post here. It came in only 10 days. Impressive.
What was not impressive was the capacity. Charged and discharged (at 50mA) with my hobbycharger.
I got 147mAh.
Charged it again in a dedicated Soshine charger for dual LiFePo4 9V
and got 158 mAh (again at 50mA).
To check if this was a single bad specimen I bought another one from the same seller.
This one gave me max 221 mAh @50mA.

A new hope…
Looking closer at one of my Soshine 9V LiFePo4 batteries I saw a pinhole in the plastic foil at the bottom of the hole between the two poles (as the picture shows).
I pressed a needle in the hole and measured 6.66V between the needle and the minus pole and 3.33V between the plus pole and the needle.
That means that I can access the top of the two lower cells and have access to both sides of the top cell.
I mention this because it gives the possibility to partly correct the balancing between the cells in the battery if it should become unbalanced.

Looking at those graphs is such a mess! :facepalm:

What a show!

It'd be interesting to check what really is inside, with regards to the protection circuitry of course.

A good thing with LiFePO4 chemistry is that a relatively high cut-off can be set without much effective capacity “loss” (≈7+V). However, this product's inconsistence and quality issues leave a lot to be desired (TrustFire does waaay better! ).

Cheers ^:)

Thanks for the review mate!

Usually soshine make good cells I wonder what the issue is? Could the extra voltage be an issue if these where used in smoke alarms?