Vanadium pentoxide thin films have been prepared by reactive DC magnetron sputtering from a vanadium metal target without annealing posttreatment. XRD, Raman and electrochemical experiments on 800nm thin films show a high crystallinity of the deposits. Chronopotentiometric measurements performed in the two voltage range 3.8–2.8 and 3.8–2.15V have demonstrated the promoting effect of the h 00 preferred orientation of V2O5 films in terms of polarization, kinetics and rate capability. The same reproducible deposition method is successfully applied to get films thicker than 1μm in order to optimize the specific capacity. Effective high specific capacities can be then obtained with films 2.4μm thick tested at high constant current density (100μAcm−2): a stable capacity of 75μAhcm−2 is available over 100 cycles in the 3.8–2.8V potential range and 130μAhcm−2 are still recovered in the range 3.8–2.15V. These results indicate a promising cycling behaviour can be expected with thick films exhibiting a preferred orientation corresponding to V2O5 planes perpendicular to the substrate.