Best Car Batteries: Starting Something

Top 8 Best Car Batteries

It happens to the best of us: we’ll head into the house after exiting our car, head filled with thoughts or arms filled with groceries. The car headlights are long forgotten, as is the dome light you turned on whilst fumbling for those blasted house keys. The next morning, in a rush to beat traffic, you twist the key and come up with a fistful of no-go. Life has supplied you (and the car) with a dead battery.

Fortunately, that scenario doesn’t happen nearly as often as it once did, thanks to headlights that automatically turn off and interior lights designed to extinguish themselves after a few minutes. Still, not everyone drives an up-to-the-minute car, packed with all the latest features. Plus, there are always gearheads with a project car or two needing a new electrical lump.

Before splashing out the cash on a new battery, ensure you’re buying one that physically fits the space in your car (yes, this could be a problem if the battery is too long or too tall for your application). We’ve selected a variety for this article. Determining the correct number of cranking amps required by your vehicle is also important. Don’t forget to use care when connecting these things, lest damage befall your car.

Go ahead and kvetch that we're vapid consumers of name-brand marketing by placing Optima batteries at the top of this post. These things reliably garner great reviews and are a well-known entity. Sometimes, there's something to be said for a familiar face (or battery, in this instance). A total of 800 cold-cranking amps should fire even the largest engines, save for that 46-liter airplane engine stuffed into the chassis of a 1900's fire engine.

The aptly-named RedTop series of batteries is designed for starting duties, as opposed to their YellowTop range which is intended for high accessory loads or cars with a lot of battery-draining electronics. Optima says their units are fifteen times more resistant to vibration and harshness than other brands in durability tests. Its unique shape is partially a product of its SpiralCell design, said to improve on the traditional flat cells in most batteries.

Given the market share of General Motors, there must be an argument that there have been more ACDelco-branded batteries installed in vehicles than just about any other variety. Your author would wager that wide swaths of the Midwest and rural Canada had at least one ACDelco battery in their driveway at any given time.

This particular unit has 740 cold-cranking amps and something called a Robust Envelope Separator which does exactly what you think it does, providing a puncture-resistant back and preventing electrical shorts within the case. Its vent cap is designed to prevent acid leakage, an event which can be disastrous to the legs of one's denim jeans. Ask me how I know.

Boasting a sky-high review rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars from a healthy sample size of real-world customers, these XS Power batteries seem to have gained a lot of fans. Available in a wide selection of physical sizes and electrical output, this 12V powerhouse should start your rig with little difficulty even in tough conditions. Take care to spec the right terminal type for your application.

Car audio fanatics have left multiple reviews, praising this battery for its propensity to maintain a steady output of juice. Short brass post adapters are needed for some OEM replacement duties so make sure they're shipped with the battery you're buying to avoid a hassle during installation. It is of an absorbed glass mat design, meaning its electrolyte is suspended in fiberglass.

It might flummox some shadetree mechanics as to why a hybrid - or all-electric car - still requires the services of a traditional-style battery. Turns out, these older types of batteries are still required to juice the thing to life, not to mention provide power for popping the trunk lid when the car is turned off, for example. This, despite its bloody big battery in the floor used for (or in part) propelling the car.

Future developments will surely render this setup obsolete. But, for now, it is a situation with which some owners will eventually have to deal - especially owners of older hybrids. This battery is made for most Prius models from 2004 and up, a vehicle age at which many cars will begin to reach end-of-life for consumables like a battery. Reviews are good and customers report successful (but careful) installation.

One of the few car batteries out there that deploy a dual terminal, this spark-o-box can be swapped from your hooptie Ford Taurus to your hooptie Chevy Celebrity with ease. By the way, your author has never understood why GM steadfastly hung on to a side-post battery terminal design while so many others moved on to the easier-to-service top posters. Anyway.

The Delphi MaxStart can be had in several other configurations, including one that looks big enough to eat breakfast off (don't, because acid). An absorbed glass mat technology apparently provides better cycle life and faster recharging than traditional flooded batteries. Delphi asserts their batteries are built to withstand much more vibration than their competitors, perhaps because they offer exact fits to OEM sizes.

We're back to the ACDelco brand for this part of our list. This is a commentary on either the shrinking number of car batteries available on Amazon since the last time we visited this topic or the inability of your author to find more brands. Nevertheless, this entrant is an old-school car battery, the type that's been around for ages.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, just because something is old doesn't mean you throw it away. As a true lead-acid battery, the seller makes sure to not it has a puncture-resistant case and ingredients which improve cycle life. Words like 'negative paste' and 'stamped alloy' will be familiar to anyone who's worked on a car in the last fifty years.

This company has three different types of batteries to form the pillars of its marketing efforts. These so-called YellowTop units are aimed at drivers who append their ride with all manner of electrical accessories - lights, sounds systems, and the like. While its cranking amp rating may be lower than some other options on this list, it makes up for it in other capacities.

It is apparently several times more resistant to vibration than similar batteries, making it a good choice for off-road use or being hammered upon by a wall of subwoofers. Depending on the total load, the thing should be good for well over an hour of reserve time, meaning you should have plenty of leeway while walking to the next town for gasoline while your traveling companion stays behind and listens to music.

Here's the Big Daddy of our list, heaving out nearly 1,000 cold-cranking amps. This means, of course, that your car should start even on the coldest Midwest morning simply by looking at the key. A limited three- or four-year warranty, depending on the model, gives enough peace of mind to override the premium asking price.

The company asserts their Odyssey batteries have a service life of up to 10 years in the right conditions, 70 percent longer than conventional deep-cycle batteries. They also boast what claims to be the highest recharge efficiency of any sealed lead battery on the market, capable of 100 percentage recharge in 4 to 6 hours.

Automotive Batteries FAQ:

Which brand of car battery is best?

What is the longest-lasting battery for a car?

Which battery is the best quality?

Are AAA brand car batteries good?

[Main photo credit: 13_Phunkod / ShutterStock.com. Product images provided by the manufacturer.]