Hello all uh. This is quite obviously a 2 amp hour 12 volt battery for park side power tools, the 12 volt power tools. You can buy those power tools from lidl as and when they appear there, but this one's a new version, it's the a3 variant and it has cell balancing. So let's get this thing open uh! This was nine pounds 99, and i've got a funny feeling that the 2 amp hour, 12 volt batteries are normally 7.99, so maybe they're charging a bit more for this version.

With the cell, balancing we'll have a look at that manual a bit of an unnecessarily large box for that, but that's the a3 variant battery. So here we are it's the papk12a3 12 volt 2000 milliamp hours, 24 watt hours now just noticed on the bottom. There's this qr code sort of etched into a little recess on the bottom. Now, don't tell me that they're bringing out a charger, that's going to read that barcode.

I don't think so. So, let's just compare this a3 variant to the a2 variant, and i've also got here an a1 variant. Let's turn them upside down, because the first thing you'll notice is that the a3 and the a2 have this little pip and the a1 doesn't and you'll notice that in some of the charges like this dual 12 volt charger, there is a little pogo pin down there, Which uh touches against that pip and if it senses one of these two later version batteries it slightly ups, the current uh from i think two and a half amps to three and a half amps. I think so.

You can see here in the manual that the a1 battery, which doesn't have the little uh pip on it, charges at 2.4, amps so 60 minute charge time in all three of the charger types. This is the dual charger here that i just showed the a2 and a3 variants um charge at 3.5 amps in the more sophisticated charges, the ones that have that little pogo pin but 2.4 amps in the basic charger. And then there is actually a 4 amp battery, which i do have it's here. It's got this triangular 3 cell part at the top.

It's also got an additional 3 cells at the bottom, so it's a 6 cell 4 amp hour battery. That, of course, takes twice as long in the basic charger, but it's quite quick, 4.5 amps in the more advanced charges so time. I think to take this apart and take a look at this cell balancing circuitry intriguing. Oh well, that's rather annoying there's a piece of sticky foam on top of the circuit board.

I think that's going to have to come off if we're going to take a look at this. There are a couple of current sense: uh resistors here, one fairly large one. Um, but yes, i think i'm gon na have to take that off now. What if they've deliberately stuck this on what looks like the wrong way around, because it's shaped kind of the other way to avoid sticking them over the current sense resistors.

I wonder if they get warm well, let's get this uh foamy, sticky, black stuff off uh wow, that's a lot of stuff in there um. These are quite possibly mosfets come on camera. There we are uh. These are, i don't know oh they're mosfets as well.

Aren't they because look those three pins are connected together, so that'll be the gate down here and we've got source and drain. There are three of these little six pin chips or possibly, five pin there's a big controller chip there. Another six pin one here, there's a lot of stuff in here. In fact, i'm gon na open up one of the other batteries um by way of a comparison, and you can immediately see that the a2 battery is quite a bit simpler.

We've got two big mosfets here. These appear to be mosfets as well um, but i can't see any controller chips now, whether they're on the other side of the board, i have done um a video. I think, on this battery. I'll have to have a look at that and here's the a1 battery two big mosfets there and a controller chip now, whether there's a controller chip on the other side of the a2 pcb, not sure, but nothing like the complexity of this battery.

With balancing. Let's see if we can withdraw this from its housing, oh it doesn't seem to oh yeah it does. It does slide out. Okay, there are the cells, oh there's, sun power, that's interesting because the little ones used to have.

I think they were called grizzly. Well. Actually, i could open these up. Couldn't i just compare them yeah.

So here are the grizzly cells, uh they're the same capacity? I believe two thousand milliamp hours yeah same as this. This is 3.7 volts. These say they're 3.6 volts, but i don't suppose it makes much difference, but yeah they've gone to these sun power cells. Okay, interesting right.

Let's check some voltages, so there's a ground connection there and then we've got all that slipping. We've got uh cell 2 right, so cell 1 is there and that's reading 4.0, exactly 4 volts cell 2. Is there and that's reading 8.0, 2 and positive? Is there be positive and that's reading 12.03? So they certainly look like they're in balance. Now pretty much all the components in here the big uh chip is an lgt 8p30.

These two mosfets are lgt 30n03. I believe that is, and those two uh sop 8s are lgt 30 and i can't quite read it, but something along that. So they're all marked with this lgt um marking now across the little six pin or five pin sat 23s are fairly anonymously, marked c3 and pd. Oh, no, that's a transistor and that one i can't see, because it's quite small, but i just wonder whether these markings have been put on afterwards or whether this is a chipset um built specifically for power tool batteries.

Let's just by way of comparison check. The cell voltages on this one so ground cell 1 is 4.14. This actually goes cell 1 to cell 2. On this one 4.14 they're going to be perfect, aren't they and cell 2 to be plus, well they're, pretty good on here as well.

There's the little 24k resistor it goes between the pip there and the t the temperature sensor, connector it's the same on the a2, it's the same 24k resistor, although strangely that's a four band on the older battery and that's a three band but whatever's available. I suppose it also goes between the pip and the t connection and, of course the a1 doesn't have that facility. So there it is that's the a3 variant of the 2 amp 12 volt battery with cell balancing that says here longer battery life. Well, i think we can understand what they mean by that.

If the cells on an older style battery say this a21 went out of um balance, then of course you've got an effectively smaller capacity battery, because they're going to hit the end stops sooner than if they're in balance. But this one increased life span, i'm not sure about that. In fact, you could almost argue a case where it wouldn't be an increased lifespan because you're going to take every cell fully to 4.2 volts and fully to 3.0 or whatever the bottom is. Whereas if it's out of balance, some cells are going to be pushed to the top, but not the bottom, and some cells are going to be pushed right to the bottom, but not the top.

Could that actually give them a longer lifespan? I don't know. That's. That's arguable but certainly uh longer battery life if your old cells drift out of balance, but that one doesn't seem to have done and so what are the park? Side? 12 volt power tools actually like well, the screwdrivers are excellent. I mean i use them a lot for building my shared um.

The brushless planer is astonishing. It's incredibly powerful and works really well the cordless um. Now what is it? The angle? Grinder, the 12 volt angle, grinder, that's a bit naughty, but yes, interesting that they've got um a feature of cell balancing on the 12 volt power tool, even before i've seen that feature being um sort of advertised for the 20 volt power tools, they do seem to Be putting quite a lot of emphasis on their 12 volt power tool range, but then 12 volt power tools are quite handy and useful for the occasional diy wire 20 volt power tools sometimes feel a bit unnecessarily powerful. Certainly, when i was assembling the shed uh 12 volt screwdrivers just felt more comfortable than using the 20 volt, they were just unnecessarily powerful for the small screws.

I was using to hold the thing together. So here's one of the 12 volt drills. This is actually the c2 variant. There is a d2 which has instead of this rotating gearbox.

It has the gear lever on the top. You can take off the chuck on these. It's quite good, so you've got a quarter. Inch hex end there if you're, just using it for screwdriving, which i often do um.

So let's try. The a2 battery in here sounds like that. Let's try the a3 battery in here, oh, possibly a semitone higher, so your 12 volt power tool. Batteries now have cell balancing cheerio.