Battery OPTIMA or OEM Subaru

I bought a red top optimum for my 2019 forester sport. Have had it in for almost 2 years without issue thus far.

Of course, you can get a new battery, and I recently had a new battery 80% covered by the dealer, since this is a very well known and documented problem. (My battery was going on 6 years old, so I felt like the discount made it a good time to replace it anyways. The discount was specifically because it is a known issue, and supposedly the new battery is more powerful and “solves” the problem, per the dealer.)

My replacement was a Blue Top 34M and it's 8 years old. No issues with Optima here.

I've had great luck with the Optima Yellow Top DS46B24R for Gen2.

I've run Optima red tops for years and never had a problem.

Ended up finding a red top in the back of the store at Advanced (34R with 800CCA). If you go with Optima know that it takes some modification with the wiring. I needed to remove a cable tie and relocate one of the positive leads. Outback started right up and is running great.

I replaced it with an Optima Yellow top battery. It lasted just shy of 3 years. Replaced it in July with another Yellow Top under warranty.

As I came to a stop, my car shut down as it does normally but the traffic began moving just as that happened. So as my car auto-stopped, I took my foot off the gas and the entire car seized - My Eye Sight was disabled, dashboard lights lit up and a high-pitched "There's clearly a fucking problem" chime screamed out at me. I had to put my car in to park (on a 4-lane highway in Boston traffic), stop the engine, restart and then recommence my drive. Fuck this feature in traffic. I'm turning that shit off from now on. EDIT: A huge "thank you" to this Sub for informing that this is a battery issue, and there was a battery drain settlement that should cover this - I specifically called that out in my service notes, and they replaced the battery under that warranty at no charge.

It's a known issue that Subaru batteries fail much too early. Subaru began warranting great numbers of them a few years ago.... And they kept using "The same faulty batteries"!!! ...and they still are.

Could be worse ... I bought a new 24 OB and within 3 months, the battery was replaced. Love the car, but crap batteries