e thinks he’s about out of time, and will probably take the Northstars if they’re in stock along his route today.
I don't think he will be making a mistake going with Northstar batteries. At all.
Northstar batteries have an interesting history (OK, that's a lie), under the Drakon brand name, and because of mergers and acquisitions it disappeared into private labels batteries and the Kinetik Power (mostly lithium-ion, tho) line of batteries. They concentrated on the telecom and industrial sectors, as well as private labels, and only recently have moved into the hybrid AGM (marine/truck) batteries under their own name. But it's the same Drakon battery technology that people went gaga over 3 or 4 years ago before it mergers and acquisitions destroyed the name, the same way that FedEx brutally murdered the Kinko's name.
Keep in mind that we're talking about the dual-purpose, hybrid deep cycle batteries here (thin lead plates for engine engine starting, trolling motors, running lights, moderate low-ish amp draws, etc.), and not the true deep cycle batteries (thick lead plates for off-the-grid boondocking and photovoltaic energy storage). Marine deep cycle batteries and truck batteries are the same thing, just with different terminal posts.
With that in mind, Optima batteries look kewl, and it's the kind of kewl you want with your gnarly car and thumping sound system. But the fact is, Optima batteries pack only about 75% of the energy into the same footprint (Group Size) as traditional AGM batteries like Northstar, Odyssey, etc. You see Optima batteries on the lake, for example, but it's on bass boats and other boats where you gotta see the gnarly kewl. But you rarely ever see them on houseboats, fishing boats, yachts or other boats where performance is critical. If you go to West Marine or some other marine battery seller, you'll mostly see Northstar, and house branded batteries made by Northstar (and house branded deep cycle 4D, 8D and 6-volt batteries made by Concorde Lifeline).
Odyssey has long dominated the racing and hybrid AGM deep cycle market for truck and marine batteries, because they manage to pack more or less the same amount of energy into the same footprint as true deep cycle batteries, with the obvious and expected diminishments that come with being dual purpose versus concentrating solely on deep cycle operations.
Enter the Drakon (now Northstar), that actually manages to be a smidge more efficient than the Odyssey batteries. To illustrate what I'm talking about, check out the Group 31 batteries that go head to head with each other here...
Northstar NSB-AGM-31M (~ $380)
103 Ah, 220 minutes RC, 75 pounds
Odyssey 31M-PC2150 (~$405)
100 Ah, 205 minutes RC, 77.8 pounds
Optima 8052-161 (~ $315)
75 Ah, 155 minutes RC, 59.9 pounds
Lead, more than anything, equals amp hours. The more lead, the more amp hours you will get. But you can see that Northstar managed to squeeze an extra 3 amp hours out of 2.7 fewer pounds of lead. Doesn't sound like much, and in day-today operations it's not, it's just 3 percent, but to battery nerds in Battery World, that's yoooge. It's like a 4% home mortgage versus a 7% mortgage. Day-to-day it's barely noticeable, but over the life of the thing, it's fairly noticeable.
You can get most any off the shelf standard hybrid AGM truck/marine battery and it's gonna have the same specs as the Odyssey, and it's probably made by Enersys (Odyssey), Johnson Controls (Exide), or East Penn (Deka). But you can also get a Northstar, with more capacity, and for a cheaper price. It's really hard to argue against a better battery that's cheaper to boot.
