Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a duck-tape/shrink-wrap battery made from soft poly cells is a bad battery. I have a personal friend who is using two big 48V 20Ah Ping batteries on his e-bike in parallel to provide a monster 40Ah of battery at 48V (his bike is more like an electric moped than an e-bike and is set-up to only use the pedals to help with pulling out from a dead stop with a single speed low ratio on the pedals) but his batteries are stored in two big metal hard boxes mounted on each side of the rear wheel which is a 13" scooter hub-motor rated for up to 3-kW of power (front of his bike is an old steel frame mountain bike with a whole new tail end made from scrap steel welded onto it) and they have both been going strong for him for over a year now with one of those two packs being a little older then the other. But his bike is built with tough metal boxes to protect the batteries and I've seen some people run those type of soft cell wrapped packs naked with no protection what-soever. doing that all you have to do is lay the bike down just once and have that unprotected battery slam into the pavement and skid and slide and tear and its all over for that pack, hundreds of dollars down the drain in an instant of time.

For that reason I personally much prefer packs that use hard body cells either prismatic or cylindrical cells and I strongly prefer that those cells use screw type connectors rather then solder tabs. That makes for a much tougher pack to start with and one that is more easily maintenanced or repaired (especially true with screw type terminals). Usually the weight is higher then the soft cell wrapped poly packs and you can't usually get them for quite as cheap (although with some shopping around you can still do quite well) but for me it is more then worth it.

Whether or not it is worth it to YOU is a decision you are going to have to make for yourself.


As to the specific products you linked too, the first two links in post #12 are both packs built from cylindrical cells with screw terminals on their ends (Headway 40152S cells to be specific) and I personally would not hesitate to buy and use such a pack or even buy and put together a "assemble it yourself" kit like your second link using that technology rather then going with a soft cell poly wrapped pack provided the prices and quality level of the cells themselves were comparable (some brands do a better job of quality control on their cells and some places are better about making sure their customers get new fresh cells not ones that have been sitting on the shelf for a couple years) because I personally much prefer packs that are made from individual hard cells with screw terminals that are fully repairable and that I can get spare cells for so that if a cell either goes bad on its own or suffers physical damage I can just replace that individual cell and it doesn't wreck the whole pack, at the same time though I wouldn't want to go with absolute bottom of the barrel no name brand cells from some ultra cheap outlet that has had them sitting on the shelf for a couple years and by the time I get the pack half the cells are bad in it. So while I certainly prefer packs built from hard case cells in a modular design I'm not willing to go scrape the very bottom of the barrel either and will go with a fresh new name brand soft cell poly wrapped pack before I do that. Not saying those headway cylinder cells aren't good quality cells or that the places you linked too don't have a good reputation for getting fresh stock to their customers, just saying I'd google search both reviews and ratings of the cells themselves and the selling companies before I purchased (good to do with any purchase by the way). The reason I say that is because I personally don't have experience with those specific cells or those specific companies. Also, for a newbie you might be best off buying the pre-built pack(s) rather then going with the "assemble it yourself" kit. I wouldn't hesitate to go with the kit myself even if the price was the exact same because I've got all the tools and I'd like to individual cycle test each cell before I assembled the pack so for me with even the exact same price for a kit or an assembled pack containing the exact same components I'd go with the kit but I wouldn't suggest that for most people.

As to the third link you provided in post #13 that pack uses "pouch cells" according to their listing which is another way of saying they are using soft cells instead of hard case cells. But instead of being wrapped up in duct-tape/shrink-wrap type material which is also soft they are packed in a really nice aluminum hard case so although the pack itself probably isn't that easily repaired (mainly an issue of obtaining replacement cells, cylindrical and prismatic hard case cells are fairly easy to find and buy individual replacement cells but individual soft cells are a little harder to find and buy individual cells that are sure to be compatible) it is well protected from damage and will take a lot of abuse before the cells inside could be physically damaged so I would personally certainly consider that a significant improvement over a soft cell wrapped poly pack and would certainly go with it over a similar priced similar capacity soft cell wrapped poly pack.