Optima Yellow Top Longevity

8 years on a yellow top. Live in California. When my yellow top died, and found out it's made in Mexico ( a lot of bad reviews) I switched to a Bosch AGM.

 

I'm understanding new optimas aren't as good as the old ones. I won't buy one. I'll go with an oddessy or whatever O'Reilly sells. I'll also be packing a mini jump start battery from Costco. in the event I'm remote and need a jump.

 

I don’t think that kind of money for a battery is worth it, unless you really need one for extra power like winches and such. Batteries seem to be hit or miss with longevity. A decent brand with a good warranty. I just picked up a Duralast gold with a 5 year warranty, with rebate it’s $125.

 

Florida res here, I have an X2 Power battery (Northstar AGM rebrand) that I bought from batteries plus roughly six years ago, I've wheeled hard with it, jumped started many vehicles with it, run all kinds of crazy accessories off it, and regularly use it to run a fan, charge my phone and camera over night while camping.

It's still going strong and had one of the best battery warranties I've seen.

I highly highly recommend X2 Power / Northstar AGM.

Also it's a G34 battery that has more capacity and higher CCA than the factory G27 Toyota battery.

Also Toyota batteries are made by interstate FWIW.

 

For the vast majority of people, a dead battery is a pretty minor inconvenience. Sure, you call in to work and let them know you're waiting on the spouse or neighbor to run you to autozone or whatever. The warranty is more important than the battery for these folks - just go get a replacement.

For those of us who use our vehicles to access remote places (and sometimes those remote places are a jumping off point for the real adventure), a dead battery can be a serous event. When I come off of a river or a trail and get into my truck that's parked 50 miles of remote dirt road from the nearest town, I NEED it to start. I'm already tired and hungry. And I really don't want to eat the MRE that's under the seat before hiking to wherever the nearest cell service might be.

This is why I went with the X2/ Northstar AGM