How Heavy Are Ryobi's 40V Batteries? Here's How Much Weight They Add To Your Tools

With the increased prevalence of battery-powered tools, Ryobi has embraced the trend wholeheartedly. The brand's catalogue is full of battery-operated tools of all types, from those needed for landscaping to ones that come in handy for a variety of small, simple jobs. The batteries themselves are quite versatile in their own right, too, with various power levels and usage times. Ryobi batteries even work in some non-Ryobi tools, taking their utility beyond their brand. With that said, they can be a bit cumbersome for some users.

While Ryobi's battery-powered line does away with unwieldy cords, the trade-off is contending with some added weight from the attached batteries. Speaking to Ryobi's 40V battery line, these can come in at a range of weights that differ with their amp hours (Ah). On the low end is the 2 Ah unit, which weighs around 2.5 pounds — the 4 Ah battery comes in a bit heavier at around 2.9 pounds. The 6 Ah is approximately 3.98 pounds, the 8 Ah is 4.1 pounds, and the 12 Ah battery jumps up to 5.85 pounds. While most users likely won't have trouble using Ryobi tools with these weighty batteries, clearly they add a bit of heft to already dense tools.

Considering their weight, one has to wonder, are Ryobi lithium-ion batteries worth dealing with? Here's how they compare to their predecessors, both in terms of weight and power.

In the modern era, Ryobi tools and batteries are distinctive — the green, black, and gray color scheme has become the brand's signature, along with the lithium-ion technology that powers its battery range. Looking back into Ryobi's history, though, this wasn't the case from the beginning — the brand's batteries looked different and contained different elements to help get the job done. These yellow and black batteries were powered by nickel oxide hydroxide and metallic cadmium, which has since been phased out of Ryobi's product offerings. Comparing them to lithium-ion units, it's no mystery as to why they've been retired.

Looking at the average 18V, 1.5 Ah nickel-cadmium unit, it weighed approximately 1.99 pounds, which is almost double the weight of the current 18V, 2 Ah, 1-pound lithium-ion battery. With a lithium-ion unit, you're getting the same voltage and increased use time without the added weight. With that in mind, if Ryobi attempted a 40V nickel-cadmium battery, one has to imagine the added weight would've been abysmal. Not to mention, lithium ion boasts a lessened environmental impact, a comparably long lifespan, and more. There may be problems and disadvantages to lithium-ion batteries, but the improvements over nickel-cadmium ones are hard to ignore.

For the most part, Ryobi's 40V batteries don't appear all that different on the outside, making their noticeable weight scaling a bit mysterious to the average person. However, looking at what's going on internally, it makes sense why they range in weight so drastically from the least to most amp hours.

For those unfamiliar with lithium-ion battery technology, it might not make sense why something as seemingly intangible as electricity would cause some batteries to weigh more than others. The fact of the matter is, though, there's a lot happening within these batteries. The bigger they are in terms of their ability to deliver energy, the more that's required to keep them operating effectively.

Amp-hours are defined as the amount of current a battery can safely sustain over a specific number of hours. Lithium ions move between a cathode and an anode through an electrolyte to deliver and release this energy. Thus, higher amp-hour batteries have the capacity to work for longer periods, so they are built to store more energy, and thanks to the extra materials needed to achieve more amp-hours, they are typically noticeably heavier. It might be a bit obnoxious, but it's the trade-off that has to be made for additional use time on a cordless system.