We have been using Roamer batteries for over 4 years now. It all started back in 2021 when we installed a 12v Smart 2 320ah battery into our camper that we converted.
We then drove this campervan halfway around the world. Which saw us traversing the full width of Canada right across to Alaska and then all the way down to the very bottom of South America.
As well as over a year in Europe and various other trips.
Along the way, our Roamer batteries experienced temperatures as low as -10 in Canada and as high as 40 degrees (in Celsius) in Nevada.
That battery is still installed (4 years on) and working absolutely perfectly. But we also now have two 24v Smart 4 230ah batteries that we installed in our boat (which we now live on).
So below I will give you an in-depth rundown of:
And ultimately ... whether I would recommend you buy from them as well.
Let's get straight into it ...
Roamer batteries are designed for use on off-grid adventures by off-grid adventurers.
The company was founded by husband-wife duo Steve and Kate, who bought their first camper in 2012 and has been hooked on van life ever since.
I think this is a huge advantage because it means they know exactly what features are useful on a wild campervan trip.
Specializing in LiFePO4 cells, Roamer offers premium batteries at an affordable price tag, and I’ll talk more about their fantastic value for money later in the review section.
Plus, they can design bespoke batteries for various campervan needs!
Having built a substantial foundation in the UK, the company is currently looking to expand to the European market.
Reflecting the owners’ passion for the environment, they’re launched a carbon offsetting and battery recycling scheme in 2022.
Steve and Kate also run a campervan rental agency called Roamer Vans.
Roamer doesn’t have an official Amazon store, so the best place to buy Roamer batteries is directly on their website.
It’s great because shipping is free to mainland UK.
Meanwhile, anywhere in Europe can enjoy premium shipping, which means delivery in 7 days or faster with UPS.
Not to mention the amazing customer support.
Before even buying the product, you’re free to ask advice from their team of campervan converters and battery specialists.
More on this below, but long and short, both o our orders from Roamer have been very convenient and quick, despite us living off-grid on our boat so having to arrange very particular delivery details.
Before revealing the nitty gritty of the Roamer batteries I’ve tried, I wanted to highlight a few benefits of choosing lithium ion over other types of leisure batteries.
The first is that they’re much more compact and lightweight than other batteries.
That means you can install it anywhere in a campervan/boat without worrying about weight distribution or storage.
Most boats and campers have very limited space for storing batteries. Switching from other battery chemistries (lead acid, AGM etc) means that you can instantly quadruple the amount of battery capacity in the same amount of space.
Having lived on a boat for 2 years now, this is the biggest issue for our neighbours in narrow boats.
They have literally no more space for extra batteries, so I think we will start seeing a big switch to lithium from that market over the next 2-5 years as they realise how safe they actually are.
As we live on a wide beam, space isn't as big of an issue. However, we have instantly doubled our capacity and halved the amount of space our lead carbon batteries took up. So it has free'd up a whole cupboard in our wheelhouse which I won't complain about!
Next, Lithium batteries are typically longer-lasting than lead acid batteries simply in terms of the number of cycles you can put them through before needing replacing.
For example Roamer batteries are rated for 3500 cycles at 80% discharge.
Just looking into lead carbon (as those were our previous batteries) most manufacturers claim somewhere into the range of roughly 1000 cycles at a 50% depth of discharge.
In terms of actual daily use, we find that most owners expect to replace their batteries every 2-4 years with fairly standard usage.
With these lithiums, I feel like you are almost guaranteed significantly longer. From personal experience, our Roamer lithium battery has now been in use for 4 years and still going strong as ever.
This is perhaps the biggest thing we loved about making the switch to lithium, is how much more you can "abuse" them.
In case you weren't aware, all other battery chemistries other than lithium usually have the rule that you should only take them down to 50% depth of discharge before replenishing back up to 100%.
The issue with taking them below this level is (and I'm probably making a massive oversimplification/being downright wrong here) is that certain things begin to sulphate and the batteries are then never properly able to go back to their true capacity again.
Whatever the actual technical reasons, the simple fact is you need to be constantly monitoring your batteries for fear of them getting ruined.
With lithium ion batteries, this simply isn't the case. Maintaining a range of roughly 20-80% can be best for preserving them long term, but you will not be as greatly punished for over/undercharging beyond these amounts.
In our van, we use ours constantly, for charging our travel drones, air con unit, heating water, our refrigerator, charging our travel laptops, our MaxxFann. Not to mention constant lighting and other minor appliances we use all day in our campervans electrical system.
Basically, constant and highly variable use. And with a decent B2B and solar setup, we have not once yet needed to recharge using a mains outlet, and the batteries have not experienced any drop in performance despite this.
On the boat, it's much of the same; just a lot more use and capacity! We even have Starlink running 24/7, which draws a fair amount of power and is 240v.
We also have two 24v fridges running as well as a 45 inch HDTV, air fryer, washing machine, lights and everything else you'd typically find in a regular home.
I just wanted to add in a quick section here at the top to mention how our 300ah Roamer battery is performing after two years.
Long story short ... amazingly!
We used it extensively for about almost 4 years, with temperatures dropping below freezing for a long time while we were road tripping Canada.
We then hit highs of 40+ Celsius for about 5 weeks road tripping the west coast of the USA. And the battery has never faltered once.
All in all that battery has been driven almost 20,000 miles all across Canada, Alaska, the USA, Mexico and even South America all the way down to Argentina. Across the worst terrain we have encountered in our camper.
We have never had a single issue with charging or overheating or anything at all. In fact, the big reason for installing this was so that we had tonnes of juice to help run our Zero Breeze Mark II AC unit throughout the night and it has been more than up to the job.
Capacity-wise, we have lost 14ah of usable battery. So the max that the Roamer battery now hits at 100% charge is 286ah.
As far as my limited knowledge of batteries goes this is pretty usual for them to slowly lose some capacity over time. And we have certainly abused the heck out of it, so in my opinion it has and still is performing excellently.
In summer 2025 we intend to spend 3 solid months back touring Europe so this will be a good true test of how it is performing. If I spot any issues I will update this section accordingly.
At the time of writing this guide, we have been using our 24 v Smart 4 batteries on our boat for 3 months. Running from October 2024 through til January 2025.
These are each 230ah. So we have 460ah of 24v power. Which in the summer will be complete overkill; as solar will be more than enough to top these up. But in the winter, we find that they can run 3-4 days of full onboard usage before needing the generator on. Though in reality we run our generator every day, otherwise filling from 0% to 100% would take about 10 hours of consistent running.
Temperatures here in the southeast of England have hit as low as -5 in the night and sunlight has been very poor, so much of the recharging we have been doing so far is via generator.
Have we noticed any issues in cold temperatures?
Not a single one.
The batteries have performed exceptionally and exactly as expected. There is a lot more tech inside of our boat than our camper and we have gone full Victron.
In part because this is our home so we wanted the best; in part because Roamer work closely with Victron so their tech syncs up most effectively with them.
We already had a lot of Victron equipment in anyway before then switching to Roamer, so it was a natural extension.
In order to meet boat safety regulations, we installed a Cerbo GS-X along with the Roamer. What this does is allow a lot of very smart communication to go on between the batteries and all other parts of the electrical system. Such as the MPPT's, inverter/battery charger and any additional sensors you wish to sync up.
It also allows you to receive notifications and alerts in case of battery voltages dropping dangerously low or any dangerous spikes or drops in battery temperatures.
This includes remote notifications by email.
There is also a Victron portal where we can login and check the status of the full system while we are away from the boat.
It's all very techy and I absolutely love it! Rather than trying to guess the state of batteries based on a voltage number, I get specific readouts on our touchscreen of what the percentages of the battery are.
To be clear, Roamer offer a full electrical design consultation and can supply all Victron gear. So don't worry you don't need to work out the nuances of boat safety regulations yourself; but instead Roamer can help you with a complete package solution.
Back in 2021, we were pretty pumped about getting to try this battery in our camper and in the last 4 years they have more than excelled in our expectations.
And as said above, the newest batteries you buy from Roamer are 2 generations newer. So though prices haven't gone up by much, the tech inside the batteries has only gotten more advanced.
Meaning you can now do things that was never possible before.
Like meet boat safety regulations and have lithium in your boat!
Roamer batteries are built for off-grid campervans, motorhomes, and boats.
They have a premium quality and offer steady power, especially considering their relatively small sizes.
I really love how the upgraded BMS can balance all internal cells. And if you ever need more power, you can easily install multiple batteries in series or parallel.
Our boat has 2 batteries that are connected together so they can communicate, but also then connected into our Victron Cerbo GS-X so they can communicate with the wider electrical system as a whole.
Not to mention a series of protections, including low temperature charging.
As of date I have tested and used the Smart2 12v 300ah battery for 4 years (now discontinued). But also have 2 of the 24v 230ah Smart 4 batteries (now available to purchase). Here is a look at all batteries they currently offer.
Remember that all of these batteries can be combined either in series or parallel to generate even more power.
Personally, these are some of my favorite things about this battery…
If I had to choose one unique feature that roamer makes particularly well, it’d be their app.
I LOVE the Roamer battery app.
A huge downside of our old AGM batteries was the inability to check exactly how much charge they had.
But the advanced BMS Bluetooth in this battery solves that exact problem.
It connects to your mobile phone so you can check the charge level whenever you want, as well as how much power is currently going into or coming out of the batteries.
There is also other real-time information for your battery stats including cell voltages, and you can view and edit parameters too.
Not to mention that the app makes identifying problems with the integrated alarms super easy.
I found the overall interface to be fairly simple and intuitive, which is another plus.
Below is the newer Roamer app for SMART4 models. It contains a lot more info than the original app and a lot more flexibility in terms of settings.
At only 30 kg, our 12V 300Ah battery is very lightweight. Whereas the dimensions are equally minimalist: 525mm x 240mm x 220mm.
It’s been super useful to have more power while reducing the battery footprint and it’s giving us more space for extra storage!
Our old setup was made up of two Xplorer™ AGM batteries, which were twice as bulky and 10 times as heavy.
Not only that, but those AGM batteries actually had 70Ah less usable power compared to our new Roamer 300Ah.
Our latest 24v 230ah SMART4 batteries (pictured below) are equally as lightweight. Combined they take up exactly half as much space as our old lead carbon setup, but supply twice the power.
As an added bonus, we now find that our boat no longer leans slightly towards the rear left as we have removed a good 100+kgof weight from that spot.
IMAE OF BOAT BATTERY BANK.
I've found the Roamer batteries to offer fantastic value for money.
Yes, it may cost slightly more to buy than AGM or lead acid batteries in terms of capacity, but I think it’s a solid investment for the long run.
They offer so many more cycles, weigh almost 90% less, are half as big, and can charge more efficiently.
Furthermore, what I love about Roamer is that they make good on their promise of quality.
The construction feels very solid and strong, and I think the owners’ real passion for campervans has really come through, as each detail has been well thought of.
If you plan on owning and using your batteries long term (i.e 3-4+ years) then I would argue that their lithium batteries work out cheaper than any AGM or lead acid/lead carbon equivalents.
One more thing I immediately loved about all our Roamer batteries is how straightforward it was to install.
It’s meant to be a drop in lead-acid replacement so you can easily install the battery in practically any campervan, motorhome, and boat.
The terminals are M8 steel bolts, which you get with the initial purchase. You’ll also get washers and spring rings.
However, I do recommend ensuring that all the chargers you use are compatible with lithium ion batteries and to configure them properly.
One thing to note is that, if you are dropping this battery in, be sure to check the dimensions and prepare accordingly. Compared to other types of leisure battery, like-for-like in power they will be much smaller.
Which is a nice problem to have! I just wanted to point it out as when switching out from our old batteries, we had to rearrange cable lengths and space for the battery to be secured.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
When installing on our boat, the setup was more complex as the batteries had to be properly synced up with our Victron system. Roamer do all of this for you remotely. You setup an account with the Victron portal which gives them remote access to work their technical wizardry.
How can I talk about a battery without mentioning its battery life?
More good news: Roamer batteries have a really good life and charge cycle.
Depending on the size, the battery offers around up to 5000 cycles at 80% discharge, while the low temperature protection is great for preventing damage when traveling in more extreme climates.
So far, I have had absolutely no problem with charging ours. In our van we have a 60amp Sterling B2B and it can keep the battery fully topped up, even on its own. We also have 480 amps of solar which keeps things topped up, even in mild sunlight, if we aren't moving for a few days.
If on average we use 50Ah-150Ah of power when parking up for the night, within 2 to 3 hours of driving, the batteries will be fully recharged for the next day.
We’ve spent most of our time in Canada with no real sunlight, and this basically shows that we don’t even really need our solar power yet to keep these batteries full!
While not exactly a feature of the battery itself, I truly feel that Roamer’s customer service deserves a special shout-out.
Their team is crazy friendly!
As I mentioned earlier, the founders are a young entrepreneurial couple who’s also passionate about campervans.
They realized that there was a HUGE gap in the market for top quality, affordable lithium ion batteries.
This caused many van lifers to resort to DIY solutions and build their own banks using dodgy, second-rate parts, which can be dangerous in the long run!
The good news is that Roamer has committed to producing superb units with proper customer service and quality guarantees in case they're needed.
If you’re planning to embark on a full-time campervan trip to explore off-grid destinations, you’ll probably love the Roamer.
Their batteries can discharge efficiently, which gives it exceptional lifetime value and thus is appropriate for long-term adventurers.
I also recommend it to anyone who has a motorhome or boat, as the safety is top notch.
Not to mention easy maintenance. So if you can’t be bothered to deal with spilling acids, then this lithium ion battery is for you!
While Roamer batteries may not be as pricey as some other lithium ion battery brands, they can still be quite expensive.
Especially if you compare them to AGM and lead-acid leisure batteries.
If you’re on a budget and want the most affordable option, maybe you should go for an open lead acid battery.
We’ve arrived at the point of this entire review. If you just want a quick answer, then don’t miss this part.
Should you buy Roamer batteries?
I have to say yes!
Their battery range includes a wide variety of sizes to suit different needs.
They’re light and compact, long-lasting, easy to maintain, safe, and come with a fantastic BMS and integrated mobile app.
Crucially for us, in our van we have been able to to safely power our Zero Breeze air con unit (which was a god send in warmer climates!). Read more about this, and how to install one in your camper in our Zero Breeze Mark 2 review guide.
So yes, I really am loving Roamer batteries very much and can’t recommend it enough for fellow van lifers.
The key reason we went for them in the first place is that they sell top quality lithium ion batteries, much more affordably than other big name suppliers, while also offering top quality customer service.
When splashing out a lot of money on just one component, it's nice to know there is a UK based customer support team right there to help if anything does go wrong.
We've backed this support up by spending a lot to upgrade our entire boats battery bank to the latest 24v SMART4 range and have again had noting but a great experience so far. I've been singing their praises to other boating neighbours.
Especially those on narrowboats who simply don't have space to install any more lead acid batteries but need extra capacity.
That wraps up our deep dive of Roamer lithium batteries!
If you’ve tried them too, let us know what you think below.
Or if you have any questions, just ask them below!
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