Battery & Electrical

ANCEL BA101 Review: A Number Instead of an Argument

A conductance tester that reads state of health in about a second and tests the charging system too. What it measures is a proxy, and that is the caveat.

By Antoni DaskalskiPublished 14 August 20264 min read

Before you buy anythingThis page also considers a carbon-pile load tester, a multimeter and a Bluetooth battery monitor. Why, and when each is the better answer.

Contents

This is the right category of battery tester for almost everybody, and this is a well-specified example of it. What it hands you is a number, and the honest framing is that the number is an inference rather than a demonstration.

A note on this assessment: researched from ANCEL's published specification, not run against a suspect battery here. See how we test.

The problem it addresses

A battery that is dying does not announce it. It cranks a little slower on a cold morning, then one morning it does not crank at all, and the interval between those two events is short and unsignposted.

A voltmeter reading does not close the gap, because voltage tells you how full a battery is and not how healthy it is. A battery can read a perfect 12.7 volts at rest and still collapse the instant a starter motor asks it for four hundred amps. That distinction is the whole reason this category exists and it is set out in checking a car battery before it dies.

How it is specified

Type: Conductance
Model: BA101
Power: Drawn from the battery under test; no internal batteries
Reports: Voltage, CCA, internal resistance, state of health
CCA range: 100-2000
Standards: JIS, EN, DIN, SAE, IEC
Also tests: Charging system — load voltage, unloaded voltage, ripple
Input range: 9-15 V
System voltage: 12 V

The charging system line is the one that is easy to skim past and is arguably worth as much as the battery test.

What it gets right

It measures the right thing and it does the battery no harm doing it. A conductance test takes about a second, needs no discharge, and can be repeated as often as you like — which means it can be used as a tracking measurement rather than a one-off verdict. Testing the same battery each autumn and watching the state of health fall is far more informative than a single reading in isolation.

Supporting JIS, EN, DIN, SAE and IEC matters more than it sounds, because CCA is not one standard. A battery rated 600 CCA to one standard is not rated 600 to another, and a tester that only understands SAE will misjudge a European battery. On a site whose audience includes a 1976 Mercedes, that is not an academic point.

And the charging system test turns it from a battery tester into a diagnosis. A battery that keeps going flat is as often an alternator or a diode fault as a battery fault, and ripple is the reading that separates them.

What it does well

Reads state of health in about a second and does the battery no harm
Repeatable, so it works as a tracking measurement rather than a one-off
Understands JIS, EN, DIN, SAE and IEC ratings, not just one
Tests the charging system including ripple, which catches a failing diode pack
No internal batteries to be flat when you need it
100 to 2000 CCA covers everything from a small car to a big diesel

What it does badly

Predicts capacity rather than demonstrating it
12 V only
Depends on the CCA rating being entered correctly
Surface charge flatters a reading taken straight off charge
Cannot power itself from a battery below about 9 V

Ugly score 5, and it earns it

A plastic handset with a colour screen and two heavy clips on a short lead, which is exactly what every tester in this class looks like. It sits in a drawer for eleven months of the year and comes out cold.

Five rather than higher because the short lead is the design decision you notice. It has to reach from the terminals to somewhere you can read the screen, and on a car with the battery in the boot or under a seat that is a stretch. Nothing about it is offensive; it simply has no interest in being looked at, which is the correct attitude for the job.

Where it stops being the right tool

It infers rather than demonstrates

This is the honest limitation of the whole conductance category, not of this unit. It measures a property that correlates well with capacity and calculates from there. Almost always that is right. Occasionally a battery passes a conductance test and still cannot turn an engine, and only a load test finds that — the trade is laid out in battery tester vs load tester.

Garbage in, confident garbage out

The tester needs the battery's rated CCA and the standard it was rated to. Both are on the label, both are easy to misread, and the device will produce an authoritative-looking verdict from a wrong input without complaint. Photograph the label rather than trusting your memory of it.

It cannot help a battery that is already flat

Nine volts is the floor and a genuinely dead battery is often below it. Charge first, rest it, then test — which is the correct order anyway, since a battery straight off a charger reads high for the same surface-charge reason a voltmeter does.

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ANCEL BA101 conductance battery tester

ANCEL

12 V only. Photograph the battery label first — the CCA figure and its standard both have to be entered correctly for the verdict to mean anything.

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Who should buy it, and who should not

Buy it if you run more than one vehicle, if one of them sits for long periods, or if you have ever replaced a battery on suspicion. It costs a fraction of a battery, it answers the question in seconds, and the charging system test frequently finds the actual cause.

Skip it if a multimeter would do. Resting voltage and charging voltage catch a large share of battery problems for much less money, and that method is in a multimeter for car owners — with the meter itself reviewed at Klein MM400.

Would we buy it again?

Yes. The category is correct for most owners and this unit covers the standards a mixed fleet needs. Read the verdict as a strong prediction rather than proof, keep the readings year on year, and it will tell you a battery is going before the battery does.

The verdict

Fix score8/10

How well it solves the stated problem.

Ugly score5/10

How much it offends the eye. Higher is uglier.

Value8/10

Worth the money, clutter and shelf space.

Would we buy it again?: Yes
Best for: Someone with more than one vehicle, a car that sits, or a battery they suspect but cannot prove — where the alternative is replacing it speculatively.

If this is not right for you

A carbon-pile load tester: Makes the battery do the actual job rather than predicting it, which is the more direct evidence and the one that settles a battery testing fine but failing to crank.
A multimeter: Reads resting and charging voltage for a fraction of the cost, which catches most problems, though it says nothing about remaining capacity.
A Bluetooth battery monitor: Watches continuously rather than once, which suits a car that sits — it catches a drain developing instead of confirming the damage afterwards.

Questions people actually ask

What is conductance testing actually measuring?

How easily an alternating signal passes through the plates, which correlates with the plate area still chemically active. From that it infers cold cranking amps and state of health. It is a proxy — a good one, used in workshops for decades — but it predicts what the battery would do rather than watching it do it.

Why does it need the CCA rating entered?

Because the measurement is relative. The tester works out what the battery is currently capable of and compares that against what it was rated for when new, and the second number has to come from the label. Enter a figure that is too high and a healthy battery reads as failing; too low and a tired one passes.

Can it test a completely flat battery?

No, and this catches people out. It draws its own power from the battery under test and specifies a 9 to 15 volt input range. A battery flat enough to be interesting is frequently flat enough to be below that, so charge it first and then test — which also removes the surface charge problem if you leave it to rest.

What does the charging system test add?

It reads what the alternator is doing under load and unloaded, plus ripple, which catches a failing diode pack. That is genuinely useful: a battery repeatedly going flat is as likely to be a charging fault as a battery fault, and testing only the battery finds the symptom rather than the cause.

Should this or a load tester be the one to own?

This one, for most owners. It is faster, it does the battery no harm, and it tests the charging system as well. The load tester is the tool that settles an argument when a battery tests acceptably and still will not crank — a real situation, and an uncommon one.

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