Milwaukee has officially announced their new M12 3.0Ah and 6.0Ah XC Li-ion battery packs.
We knew that these battery packs were on the way, but it’s still somewhat surprising. Well, maybe surprising isn’t the right word. Eye-opening, maybe?
The new M12 3.0Ah compact battery pack is the first 12V-class and 18V-class compact battery pack, or at least it’s the first I’ve seen. Most other brands top out at 2.5Ah.
What this means is that you can get more work done, while maintaining an M12 tool’s compact size and light weight.
There is also a 6.0Ah M12 XC battery pack on the way, which will give you more runtime than any M12 battery before it. As with the other XC packs, this makes an M12 tool slightly larger and heavier, and the ergonomics might change a little bit, but the benefit is a great boost in runtime.
Think about what this means for your M12 power tools, lighting products, Bluetooth speaker, or heated jacket.
Milwaukee’s press materials mentioned something that got me thinking.
With the ability to deliver more work per charge and more work over the life of the pack than any other 12V battery on the market, the XC6.0 battery is a leap in lithium-ion technology that completely changes the expectations of what cordless 12V tools are capable of.
I have been considering the runtime benefits of higher capacity battery packs, but there is also a longevity component to think of.
Each battery pack has a finite number of charge and discharge cycles before performance begins to degrade, and a finite number of cycles before the degradation will severely hamper your work. Under the assumption that the battery cells have comparable charging cycle specifications, longer runtime should then mean fewer charge cycles, and longer life, compared to lower capacity packs.
Hmm. Ah well, that’s just me thinking aloud. At the least, the new battery packs offer higher capacity and longer runtime.
The next thing to think about is where Milwaukee will go from here. Compact 4.0Ah battery packs? 8.0Ah XC packs? 9.0Ah High Demand packs?
ETA: August 2016
For all you Milwaukee M12 users, and I know there are a lot of you out there, will you be stepping up to these new higher capacity battery pack sizes?