I spent over 2 months testing the SmartShunt alongside 3 of the best battery monitors for RVs and 12V-48V solar batteries. I connected the SmartShunt to a 12V battery bank, performed charging and discharging cycles, familiarized myself with its mobile app, and tested its Bluetooth range. Contact online >>
I spent over 2 months testing the SmartShunt alongside 3 of the best battery monitors for RVs and 12V-48V solar batteries. I connected the SmartShunt to a 12V battery bank, performed charging and discharging cycles, familiarized myself with its mobile app, and tested its Bluetooth range.
After all that, the SmartShunt ended up being my favorite battery monitor. It works with virtually every type of RV and solar battery, has built-in Bluetooth for remote monitoring, and is one of the most customizable and accurate battery monitors I''ve used. Plus there''s a water-resistant version with an IP65 rating for wet or marine environments.
If you’d like to know how the SmartShunt compares to other top battery monitors — such as the Victron BMV-712 Smart and the Renogy 500A Battery Monitor — check out my full review of the best battery monitors, or watch the following video I made of my testing.
The SmartShunt is by far the easiest battery monitor to install. It doesn’t have a screen, so all you have to do is mount the shunt, which can be done in 2 ways:
The SmartShunt powers up automatically once you’ve connected everything properly. To set it up for your system, you download the free VictronConnect mobile app and open it up on your phone. The SmartShunt has Bluetooth built-in, so you interface with it and adjust settings entirely through the app.
Locate the SmartShunt in the app’s list of devices and connect to it following the instructions. Once you’ve connected, you’ll see the SmartShunt’s “Status” screen that displays important specs such as battery percentage, battery voltage, current, and wattage.
To complete setup, you need to input your battery settings. Tap the gear icon in the top right corner to go to the settings menu and tap on “Battery”. Here you’ll see a lot of battery settings, most of which make no sense the first time you see them.
Of course, like any battery monitor, the SmartShunt has the basic settings, like battery capacity and state of charge. But then there are plenty more, things like Peukert exponent and charge efficiency factor, that you can tweak to make the monitor even more accurate for your system.
Fortunately, Victron gives us a detailed product manual that has guidance on each setting based on battery type. Also, a quick search for “victron smartshunt” will yield plenty of excellent videos that will help you dial in the right settings for your battery.
Once you connect to the SmartShunt, which must be done every time you open the app, you’ll be taken to the SmartShunt’s “Status” screen. It shows you a lot of information at a glance, such as voltage, current, state of charge, wattage, and estimated time remaining. I spend most of my time on this screen.
If you want to dig in further, there are history and trends tabs that show you historical information about your system, such as total amp hours charged and discharged. The trends reports will delight the battery nerds out there: they show things like voltage, current, and state of charge over time.
And then there’s the settings menu, which includes the aforementioned battery settings and settings for some extra features. I’ll cover the extra features a little later on, but know that this is where you go in the app to set those up.
Since my 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 battery was 100% charged when I set up my SmartShunt, I proceeded to connect a 2000W inverter and perform a discharge test. I discharged the battery at a 0.2C rate (i.e. 20 amps) and monitored its performance.
While the battery was discharging, I set a low-capacity alarm in the Victron app to go off when the battery’s remaining capacity hit 10%. This is one of the SmartShunt’s extra features.
Everything worked as expected during the discharge test. I was able to monitor exactly how many amps and watts my inverter was using at any given moment. The state of charge told me exactly how much battery percentage I had left. And the time remaining feature is a nice touch when you’re using more or less a constant amount of power.
Once the battery percentage dropped below 10%, I expected to hear an alarm coming from the SmartShunt. But it didn’t make a sound. I checked the Victron app and that’s where I saw an in-app alert telling me that my battery capacity was low.
I looked into it and learned that the SmartShunt is not equipped with a buzzer. Victron says itself in the product manual that “the generated alarms are only visible on the VictronConnect app while connected to the SmartShunt or are used to send an alarm signal to a GX device.”
I disconnected the loads from the battery at around 5% and then started charging my battery bank, first using a lithium battery charger and then using a 300 watt solar array. The ‘alarm’ turned off at the set capacity, and I was able to use the Status screen to monitor the charging process. The battery monitor performed as expected throughout.
Then, I put the SmartShunt in the battery compartment of my dad’s RV and tested its interrupted Bluetooth range, when the SmartShunt was surrounded by walls and electrical equipment. I measured a range of 30 feet — a drop of roughly 70 feet.
30 feet was enough range for me to connect while walking around the outside of the RV. But I couldn’t venture very far away or else I’d lose connection.
If your battery bank is far away from where you spend your time, such as in another building on your property, I’d recommend looking at the Victron BMV-712, whose interrupted Bluetooth range I measured at 100 feet.
Like I mentioned, the SmartShunt has an ‘alarm’ feature for low capacity and low and high voltages. The alarm is really just an in-app alert. There is no sound emitted by the shunt.
If you want, you could connect the SmartShunt to a Victron GX device and have the alarm signal sent there. But that’s only a solution for advanced users who are ready to spend the extra money to set up a system like that.
The SmartShunt can monitor the midpoint of your battery bank, or the voltage of a starter battery, using the auxiliary port. It can also do temperature monitoring if you buy Victron’s temperature sensor.
These extra features are all nice to have, but by no means necessary. If you have a large, expensive battery bank I’d recommend considering a battery monitor that does midpoint monitoring — which helps you better monitor the health of individual batteries — but otherwise I don’t think it’s needed.
After testing 4 of the best battery monitors over the course of a couple months, the Victron Energy SmartShunt 500A ended up being my favorite. It works with 12-48V lithium and lead acid batteries, which covers virtually all types of RV and solar batteries.
It’s easy to install, has Bluetooth with decent enough range for my purposes, and is highly customizable. It’s the monitor I reach for first when filming videos, testing solar equipment, and building DIY solar projects.
A small ask: If you found my Victron SmartShunt review helpful and are planning to buy one, please consider buying through one of my affiliate links below — I’ll get a small commission which will help fund more reviews like this one. Thank you! 🙏
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