Best Off Brand Batteries for Panasonic Lumix Cameras

Recently I have spent some time testing the K&F Concept (Kentfaith) BLK22 charger for Panasonic Lumix cameras. A lot of the Lumix cameras use this BLK22 battery including the S5, S5ii, S5iiX, GH6, GH7, GH5m2. This post isn’t sponsored but I did request this product from K&F Concept to test and they kindly sent it to me and are letting me keep it so I can have a lifetime test. To be clear, I do use K&F Concept / Kent Faith products regularly like their bags and filters and have paid for them with my own money.

 

 

I know some people will be immediately put off because they don’t like using 3rd party batteries but I use them all the time. But my go-to is generally the Lumix battery as it holds the most consistent charge but this battery could change all of that.

 

 

Lumix doesn’t seem to be very consistent with who gets a charger and who doesn’t when it comes to new cameras. If you purchase the GH6 or GH7, you get one but if you purchase the G9m2, S5m2 or S5m2X you don’t get one. All of these cameras can be charged over USB, so it’s not as if you can’t charge the camera without one but it is very useful to have a separate charger as it means you can charge 2 batteries at once. Or at least use the camera whilst you charge your second battery.

 

 

The official BLK22 is a 2200mAh hence the name. Whereas the K&F Concept 3rd party battery is 2400mAh. Although not a huge increase, it is around 10% which is significant considering you can just replace the existing battery with it and even use a power bank to top it up. The battery in the camera lasts around 60-90 minutes when recording video, so you essentially get 5-10 minutes of additional recording per battery. But the benefit here is that most 3rd party batteries don’t last as long as an official battery but this one in theory will.

 

 

The charger itself is fairly straightforward, it has a nice digital readout for the battery charge status broken down into 25% increments as opposed to the rather odd Lumix 50%, 80% and 100% indicators. It can be powered over USB-C or Micro USB which is handy as you generally will always have one of those two charging leads available. It does come with a USB-A to USB-C lead in the box. The charger does have overcharge protection but be sure not to use both charging leads at the same time.

 

 

It takes 3 and a half hours to charge one battery and around 5 hours to charge two batteries simultaneously. So this is slightly quicker than the Panasonic charger that is supplied with the camera. I personally will have 4 batteries available at any given time so this allows me to cycle batteries throughout the day.

 

 

I did a controlled test as there are lots of different variables that can run the battery down in different situations and I wanted to make it as fair as possible. I had even prepped all the shooting options on another battery before the test, so I could just switch the camera on and shoot with both batteries. The test was done using 4K 420/10bit Long Gop at 25fps and I recorded it to my DIY NVME card that I made. The K&F Concept battery lasted just over 90 minutes (1:30.34) recording an hour and a half of video while the stock Lumix battery lasted 88 minutes (1:28.39) giving just under an hour and a half of shooting time. Depending on usage your mileage may vary. So the paper specs for the battery are fairly accurate but don’t quite offer that additional 5-10 minutes. I wouldn’t say this battery outclasses the official Lumix battery, although Its very fine margins. But for a 3rd party battery to keep pace with an official battery and exceed it is impressive.

 

 

I tried to be quite extensive with how I used the battery and there were no restrictions I could find although on encountering a write speed issue with my SSD I couldn’t seem to get resolved without a camera restart but this is common for 3rd party batteries. This only happened once and the camera power cycled as expected but it is worth mentioning.

 

It also doesn’t do a battery charge check like the official one which is a shame because I quite like that feature. But you can obviously put the battery into the camera to find out its charge so it’s a minor quibble.

 

 

A Lumix battery costs £75 or around 100 dollars US and the charging sled is around £100 (around 130 dollars USD). So in total, you are looking at around £250 ($330) to have 2 spare batteries and a charger. By comparison, this set costs $52.99 (around £40) with free shipping at full price and often they are discounted. With that, you have the ability to charge 2 batteries simultaneously and the benefit of those batteries being a little bigger. So comparatively you save about 85% in terms of cost going with these 3rd party batteries even when purchasing them at full price.

 

 

Overall I am very happy with the batteries and charger and they will make a nice addition to my camera bag. I always like to have backup batteries and from the 3rd party batteries I have tried these last the longest. For the price I don’t really think you can really find any better.