While it is no guarrantee batteries quality is proportional to its price.
As they come off the production line each & every one is extensively tested the ones that are just barely acceptable go down the chute & get the Walmart stickers put on it
And from then on as the quality increases they get stickers for higher cost brands.
Most factories have only one assembly line for any particular battery and they hope that all of them will be perfect.
But this never happens so they get graded as per above .
The top line will be sold in a printed box , the bottom end is usually supplied bare
Now the caveat to this is Walmart need 1,000,000 batteries month but the factory will not make a million almost dud batteries a month .
So they fill the short fall by rebadging the next highest grade Walmart and if still not enough then they go up another grade level till the order is filled because the line is designed to make perfect batteries only .
The problem comes when some one pays $ 10 but gets the $ 100 battery rebadged and no surprise the $ 10 battery last 10 years without any problems so they post this on the web claiming that the Walmart batteries are better than the battery shop batteries and cost 90% less and the myth is born & spread .
As batteries do go bad over time, there is a good chance that the $ 100 battery you bought from the battery shop was 5 years old before you bought it because they do not sell many $ 100 in year as most people buy the mid range $ 50 battery .
So you buy the $ 100 battery expecting to get 10 years out of it but only get the same 5 as you did from the $ 50 so you go on face book & tell everybody there is no difference between the $ 100 top line battery & the $ 50 popular battery, yet another myth is born & spreads all over the web .
Now batteries are made very differently for different applications
Mower & motorcycle batteries have thicker grid plates to compensate for the rough ride they get & the vibrations .
The vast majority of batteries, not subjected to abuse like running them dead flat and leaving them like this for extended times die from mechanical failure.
By far the strongest construction is the spiral cell structure used by Optima & Cyclon and these are head & shoulders better than any other battery lead acid you will ever buy .
They are also the most expensive .
Toro uses them as standard on some of their better mowers .