Walmart Batteries Mostly Trail O'Reilly in Project Farm's Group 65 Test

Project Farm ran a thorough head-to-head test on nine new Group 65 car batteries, and the results show why the cheapest option isn’t always the best deal. As reported by The Drive, four Walmart batteries went up against five from O’Reilly Auto Parts. Each brand brought one AGM battery to the test, with the rest being conventional flooded lead-acid units.

Walmart’s prices ranged from $79 to $189, while O’Reilly’s ran from $100 to $260.

Host Todd started by checking voltage, amperage, and state of health with a multimeter and battery analyzer. The Walmart flooded batteries didn’t impress: all four showed high internal resistance and a state of health between 84% and 88%, despite being brand new. A carbon pile load test told a similar story, with O’Reilly’s lead-acid batteries outperforming their Walmart equivalents.

Walmart’s AGM battery did beat O’Reilly’s AGM in that test, though.

At zero degrees Fahrenheit, O’Reilly’s lead-acid batteries continued to shine. The $100 entry-level O’Reilly Super Start Value registered 827 cold cranking amps, which was 302 amps higher than the cheapest Walmart battery, a battery that cost only $20 less. In the final scoring, O’Reilly took the top two spots, and every O’Reilly lead-acid battery beat its cheaper Walmart counterpart.

Walmart’s AGM came in at $189 and beat O’Reilly’s AGM, making it $79 cheaper, but it still only tied for third place with one of O’Reilly’s lead-acid batteries.