Battery OPTIMA or OEM Subaru

I’m in the UAE, where summers hit around 50°C. This Forester is my first car with auto start-stop, and I’m impressed that the battery lasted a solid 4 years. With my driving habits (lots of short runs), my previous cars’ batteries would barely survive 1–1.5 years. This one lasted more than double that.

Still on vanilla battery. As part of my wife's start process is start car, press button to turn off auto off. Seems to be working.

Our car straight up died on the road twice, to the point it couldn't be jumped, with my kids in the back seat. Subaru eventually gave us an upgraded battery.

I use an Optima Yellow Top battery and it made a big difference. The Yellow Top is honestly just good for the car in general.

I’ve got Optima batteries in some of the more “Special” cars.

Yellow top is/was a hybrid cranking/deep cycle battery, once popular for putting big stereo systems in cars because it could handle the discharge cycles of running the system without them engine running.

The optimas (red top) I got in 2019 are still going. They are not the best though just better than liquid.

My 2020 Outback OEM battery only lasted 3-ish years.

The OEM Subaru battery does not have a lot of reserve power.

DO NOT buy a red top Optima. They haven't been good or worth the price in like 15 yrs.