(07-12-2026, 05:45 PM)Punatang Wrote: After 5 years of Ryobi Mowing, weed whacking, blowering, and chainsawing, my batteries dwindled down to just one working 6ah. The replacements at HD are sky high
If you have patience you can find 40v 6ah Ryobi batteries on eBay for about $100 with free (or close to free) shipping. The other alternative is Obie's suggestion to wait for a sale.
Often times it's cheaper to buy a tool you might not need plus battery than to just buy the battery at the local HD during a sale. It doesn't make any sense, but that's the world we live in. One time I found a stacked sale on the Home Depot web site for local pickup which boiled down to buying one tool with 18v battery and getting a second free tool of my choice plus three additional batteries for free. Two of the three free batteries were really small (like 2ah) and the others were 4ah. Basically it was $79 for the tool I was looking for, plus an additional tool, and a total of four batteries for $79.
The downside to buying a Ryobi battery on eBay is whoever is selling is not an authorized reseller (there is no such thing, only Home Depot and Ryobi are authorized sellers: Ryobi is the Home Depot discount brand of Milwaukie tools) so there is no warranty. You also run the risk of counterfeit items, but anybody who makes common sense precautions can generally avoid counterfeit Ryobi batteries on eBay. I've never personally had a problem buying legit Ryobi batteries on eBay. I have also purchased 18v knockoff batteries on Amazon, and some of those were really good, actually better than Ryobi, but they were NiMH batteries that worked with the old nicad chargers. They had a "lithium like" profile except their weight, and the old nicad chargers didn't know the difference. They had a good run for their era but Ryobi caught on and made sure any chargers they made going forward would reject them, so that hack is gone. I'm guessing any "lithium" knockoff batteries are probably garbage like their price suggests. At their core are 18650 cells and if they used quality cells they couldn't sell them so cheap.
Edited to add: There are some youtube hacks you can try to make "failed" Ryobi batteries work again. I've used one with success. It does require some comfort working around a circuit board and using a jumper. I used a bread loaf twist tie by burning off the plastic edges and jumping the circuit with the wire.