Both Makita 40v 8Ah Batteries on the Inside. Makita BL4080F VS BL4080H

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:08]That is one big box and one heavy battery.

[00:00:12]Look at it. It's bigger than this light with a 2 amp hour battery on it. This is of course, as you can see on the box, the 8 H tabless battery from Makita.

[00:00:23]Makita's biggest and strongest battery currently available. Outputting up to 3,800 peak watts or continuous at 2,800 watts.

[00:00:34]Now, it's taken me a while to get around to making a video about this. I have used this battery in a few videos. I think it was in the chainsaw. Well, I know it was in the chainsaw, the 50 cc UC030G, and I'm pretty sure it was in a heat gun, 40-V heat gun. Well, today we're going to take a look at what's inside it because, presumably, it's running the same batteries the same cells, should I say, as one of these, the 4040F. Basically, this is two of these. Although, look at the size of the box. It looks absolutely massive.

[00:01:07]Here's a box for a with a 4040F in it. And, yeah.

[00:01:12]It's a couple of those, no problem at all.

[00:01:15]And width-wise, woof.

[00:01:17]She's a big old beast.

[00:01:20]Shall we open it up and take a look?

[00:01:25]Boom.

[00:01:26]Let's see it next to the four and next to a two / two [snorts] and a half. They're both the same size, so don't worry about that. It is a beast of a battery.

[00:01:37]But, what is on the inside? That's what we want to know. Is it using the same batteries, the same cells, again should I say, as this? So, that is using, if we take a look at this, and jeez, I don't want to look at that one.

[00:01:54]That one has survived a fire.

[00:01:57]And that is a tabless cell. Take a look there, you'll see it's made by Murata and up on the top there, that top line that's getting obscured by the light a bit, it says VX40.

[00:02:09]That is a tabless cell.

[00:02:12]I cut one apart which you may have seen in the opening shot of the video. The one in the opening shot actually was not the tabless one. That was a standard tabbed one out of a standard 4 amp hour Makita battery.

[00:02:23]These are the tabless cells. These are the Murata VX40s out of one of these batteries.

[00:02:30]And we want to see if they're inside that one. Be careful taking apart batteries and especially be careful if you try and cut one of these open because yeah, they can be a little fiery.

[00:02:41]So let's just get that out of the way for the moment.

[00:02:46]Are they the same?

[00:02:47]Well, there's only one way to find out.

[00:02:49]We need to pull this apart. But like any good cooking show, here is one I prepared earlier. So this is another BL4080H, this battery here.

[00:02:59]So I can see they are green. They are most likely Murata cells. If we peel this out of the way. Hopefully we're going to be able to read this without me having to butcher it like I had to do with one of these to find out. If we take a look right at the top of that battery cell, you'll see 21700 VX40.

[00:03:22]As predicted, exactly the same battery cells as the 4040H.

[00:03:29]There's two of these and one of these. If you want to know the difference between a tabless cell and a standard cell on the inside, then I did a video, I'll put it down there, up there, when I pulled apart one of these and I cut open one of these and a standard battery which yeah, was the one that was at the beginning of the video, um to show you the difference on the inside and to prove at the time that Makita were actually using tabless cells because lots of people, including prominent YouTube channels, said they were not. And I was pretty damn certain they were.

[00:04:00]And so, I was the first person to pull one apart, but I'm guessing I'm not the first person to pull one of these apart on YouTube because they've been out for quite some time and I've been dragging my heels somewhat. Let's take a look at the top of the board, shall we? You can see this gunk that is covering all the contacts down to the cells was very wet still when they put this on, hadn't set off because bam, that's been pushed on and you can see all the marks in there there from the top of the lid.

[00:04:27]Got some things I haven't seen on some of the So, clear silicone over some bits there. What's going on there?

[00:04:34]Look at that bad boy. That resistive shunt is so big, it's got its own QR code, for crying out loud. Now, I don't recall the 8F having anything like that when I pulled that apart. So, I guess um I need to compare it just to jog my memory again. So, I'll go and grab one of those. Okay, so I'm a little bit confused here. These are both 8Fs.

[00:04:55]This one has a bung in it.

[00:04:58]This one has a bung in it.

[00:05:01]These are the only two 8Fs I have.

[00:05:06]Did I have another one that I pulled apart that I got rid of?

[00:05:09]Or starting to think that maybe I haven't pulled an 8 apart.

[00:05:14]Could that be true? That today is the first day that I've pulled apart any Makita 40-V 8-A battery? I've pulled apart all the others multiple times.

[00:05:25]How could it be that I didn't pull one of these apart? Surely I did to check the cells and stuff.

[00:05:30]Didn't I?

[00:05:31]Let me know down below if you've seen a video of me pulling this battery apart.

[00:05:34]Um yeah.

[00:05:36]But according to the bungs, I haven't. So, I will now and we'll compare them. This bar in the 8H, the tabless battery, is what looks to be aluminum.

[00:05:49]Just a piece of aluminum.

[00:05:51]Something different going on there, of course, though.

[00:05:54]Whereas, this one without the sort of resistor in the middle is made of something else.

[00:06:03]Can we get in close enough for this?

[00:06:05]Hopefully, the camera is picking up that it is silver on the top, but not on the underside. Now, I don't know enough about batteries and all the bits that make them up in electronics and stuff to explain what all the differences are on this battery to the other battery, but this is the standard F battery, the first one that was released. This is the H, the tabless, and I'll leave them both here for a few seconds, so you nerds can take a look at them and work out what's different and what's not. This area here with these bars and these couple of chips here looks to be the same physical size as the ones that are underneath the gunk here.

[00:06:41]So, that is possibly the same. This area here is slightly different to this side.

[00:06:48]These contacts are different color. The order of the chips here looks a little bit different, and it is different in this region, definitely. And, of course, the bar here that we've been speaking about. Better just check what cells are in the old F battery, too, eh, while we're here. Now, I've had a look, and it's almost impossible to see with the camera, I'm guessing, but if you look in here, right down here, in that area, I'll see if I can zoom in on it, but not holding out a great deal of hope of getting in there. It is VTC6A.

[00:07:24]That's what this is full of. That's what the 4 amp hours are full of, the non-Fs.

[00:07:30]So, basically, your standard 4 amp hour is two of them inside one of these, and your tabless 4 amp hour, the F battery, is two of them in one of these new H batteries. The screws were different as well, actually. They're exactly the same amount of screws in exactly the same place, but um they seem to be saving money on the thread now because these are the screws from the outside of the pack from the bottom. Uh the ones on the left here, that's the H. These are the main screws that go on the bottom. So, that's the H, that is the F. And it's the same when it comes to the internal screws. The ones on the left uh the new H battery and the full thread on the F all the same size. Um torques heads, though.

[00:08:12]And this is well sealed. There's a thick layer over the Oh, that's a soft that.

[00:08:18]Thick layer to protect everything here from water ingress. A lot of guys are a little worried about these batteries cuz they have so many big vents in them.

[00:08:24]They're worried about water getting in them. But as you can see, everything's well protected, all covered from any moisture that gets in.

[00:08:31]Having said that, you know, not too good of an idea to like drop it in a bucket of water or anything.

[00:08:36]Speaking of that, we've also got some grease some dielectric grease on each end of the contacts here. That's meant to be there. It's not a little blob of glue or anything. It's soft and greasy.

[00:08:44]Silicone-based grease. And when you first slide that onto a tool, it will push all that grease through all the contacts. Now, I don't want to leave this out like this for too long. I want to get it back together so I don't damage it because this is like a $600 battery. So, that ain't cheap. And if you want to see what is inside these 9 and 12 amp hour 18-volt battery, woohoo, then um take a look down in the description and up here and in the comments, I'll put a link to the videos of the insides of these as well.

[00:09:16]Few more videos coming up on these too in the near future. So, I'll put it back together. If you're wondering why it's so large and how the cells work if you're not too familiar. So, you need at least 10 cells for a 36-volt battery or a 40-volt max battery. So, why is it 36 and 40-volt? Well, basically, the cells are sort of rated at 3.6 volts. But when they're fully charged, they can get up to about 4.1 volts.

[00:09:39]But, they go with a nominal voltage of 3.6 to make up 18 volts when you add five of them together. When you add 10 of them together in series, you get 36 volts or 40-volt max, but really they these could have been called 41-volt max because they go over 41 when they're fully charged, when you first get them anyway. So, every battery needs 10 cells. That's why you can't really make one smaller than this at the moment, battery cells, because you need five and five no matter what. That's the minimum.

[00:10:13]So, with one of these though, you have 10 and 10.

[00:10:18]So, you've got 10 in series and then another 10 paralleled up with that to make use of all 20 cells and give us our 8 amp hour. Double one of those. Each cell is 4,000 milliamp hours.

[00:10:31]Add 10 of them together, you get 4 amp hours. Add 20 of them together, you get the 8 amp hours. They could use higher output cells like some 5,000 milliamp hour ones and make it like a 10 amp hour battery this size. And the way things are going, they could probably do a 12 amp hour that size soon if we have 6,000 milliamp hour cells. With the tablet technology now, they can get the power to run far more efficiently through these cells and hopefully they'll be able to get them a little bit bigger as well. If you could get up to a 12 amp hour in the same physical size and weight as this, that would be very nice.

[00:11:05]Speaking of weight, 4080H.

[00:11:09]1.838.

[00:11:11]1838. Let's see how it compares to an old school one.

[00:11:18]1859. Oh, the tablet cells may be slightly lighter than the standard cells. I think we found that with this as well that this was slightly lighter than the old school battery.

[00:11:30]Seems strange calling 40-volt old school. Now, I haven't noticed any difference in the rails on the H and the F battery.

[00:11:39]They look to be the same.

[00:11:42]But then again, I thought the 4F and the standard 4 were the same as well for quite some time, and then I realized they weren't one day. This is a standard 4. You take a look at this area here.

[00:11:54]The rails are quite narrow.

[00:11:56]This is the 4F, and you'll see much more substantial, about twice the width. That width, of course, goes inward rather than outward. This outside width has to always stay the same, or else it'd never fit on anything. But as you can see, these ones have this ramp bit on the top they're going in, and they're a bit wider. But it's not just the difference between the 4 and the 4F because just to show you, 4F.

[00:12:20]This is a standard 4, but it is a newer version than the one I just removed, and it too has the wider rails. So, I found that out when I was trying to stick an adapter or something on them, I can't remember now, and these wouldn't fit.

[00:12:35]But these old ones did. So, there's been a tweak at some point, either for strength or to stop them going on certain tools, I don't know. Cuz if you have a look here, these are fairly flat on the inside, but if we put one of the 8-A power batteries back up there, you'll see just here there is a little ridge on both sides.

[00:12:58]That is to stop you from putting this battery on tools that Makita think it shouldn't be going on, either for weight purposes or because it's too powerful for the tool or something like that.

[00:13:09]So, yeah, certain batteries don't fit on certain tools. I might have to do another update on a video on that sort of thing, and we need to now go and make a video about how this compares to some of these other batteries, like this one, and more interestingly, this one. How much more grunt does this really have over this?

[00:13:30]I'll um have to come up with some tests and I'll see you on another video for that. Let's just have a quick check of the batteries and see what voltage they ship at. So, this is This is the one I pulled apart.

[00:13:46]Um currently powering this, believe it or not, off my television, which is sitting just to the left of shot.

[00:13:53]Da da da da.

[00:13:55]So, no chargers. It's shipped at about 30%.

[00:14:01]23° inside, 33.6 volts.

[00:14:05]And let's see, this one's also 33.6.

[00:14:10]Da da da da da da da.

[00:14:12]It's about the same, a little bit cooler. 33.5.

[00:14:16]Okay, here we go.

[00:14:19]That's some information you may or may not find useful. I'm going to go put that one back together so that we can use that one in the tests as well.

[00:14:26]And I'll see you again soon.

[00:14:29]Usually I take these bungs out by drilling them out. Occasionally, I can't be bothered and I do it like this.

[00:14:39]Got you. Geez, that one's almost reusable, isn't it?

[00:14:43]Stick it back in when I'm done. The anode goes out one end and the cathode comes out the other, but they can't touch on the inside, else that's when you get woof.