Best battery charger/tender you can buy

[Shaun @ Tru6]

40 years ago at 16 I got a Schumacher battery charger. Worked great until a few years ago and it went into the dumpster. Sparks are bad in a battery charger. I needed a new tender charger and went with Schumacher, it either worked a day and then died and or didn't work out of the box.

Some research and got a well-reviewed Chinese brand, that has worked well for charging and tending, great big digital display.

For some reason I also got a Noco Genius 5, don't remember why, at the same time. Though a limited experience pool, it has to be one of the best you can buy. I have drained 2 batteries down to 6+ volts and both of them have been brought back to life with the Noco. The Chinese one above failed after a few hours on both batteries, got a "batt" on the display but the Noco revived them, miraculously.

Highly recommended.

[A930Rocket]

I’ve had a NOCO battery tender for my 330, for the past year and so far so good.

[WPOZZZ]

I have a lot of maintainers. Diehard, CTEK, Battery Tender, DeWalt, Sylvania and a few no name ones. They all seem to work the same, but I tend to use the ones with an AGM setting.

[herr_oberst]

I bought a couple of these from Gooloo after seeing a Project Farm test.

I'm satisfied. They work fine. I don't know if it's pulled a battery back form the depths of 6 volts, but it has revived more than one dead battery.

(As to the Schumacher, same story. I had a Craftsman (rebranded Schumacher) forever. When I bought my 911 I bought a Schumacher tender that lasted maybe a couple of years before it started whining. Lobbed it into the trash.l

[sc_rufctr]

I've owned a CTEK for close to 15 years with no issues (I'm semi retired & I often use it on my daily).

[unclebilly]

It snowed about a foot the day before the biggest car show in our province 5-6 years ago… I brought my Baja bug instead of a Porsche… there were maybe 40 cars in the show.

I came home with about 6 of those NOCO chargers and they are awesome! If your battery is too dead to recognize, connect another good battery in parallel and charge both.

Recently, I fixed 2 very dead 8D batteries out of a D6 Cat bulldozer with a NOCO.

Really great technology.

[Noah930]

I went through a similar progression with battery chargers: Schumacher --> Noco.

Some retired enginerd on a Ducati board recommended an inexpensive Schumacher. He sat there with a multimeter and tested various chargers like he was Consumer Reports.

But now Schumacher no longer makes that model of charger, so a few years ago I switched to the Nocos, and they've been great.

[Bill Douglas]

CTEK certainly work well. I think I've also had mine for about 15 years too. Porsche made a battery tender that looks like a re-badged CTEK charger.

[wdfifteen]

Thanks for the review. I’ve had Schumacher for years with only one issue (a bottom of the line model cooked a mower battery to death).

But Schumacher has such a confusing range of models now that I think they’ve become just a marketing company trading on the name. I don’t see why a serious manufacturer needs to make so many models. You can’t depend on the name anymore.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

I bought a couple of these from Gooloo after seeing a Project Farm test.

I'm satisfied. They work fine. I don't know if it's pulled a battery back form the depths of 6 volts, but it has revived more than one dead battery.

(As to the Schumacher, same story. I had a Craftsman (rebranded Schumacher) forever. When I bought my 911 I bought a Schumacher tender that lasted maybe a couple of years before it started whining. Lobbed it into the trash.l

That's the other one I have. I must have bought it based on Project Farm. It's a good tender charger but the NOCO is definitely better in that it can revive a truly dead battery.

[917_Langheck]

The best one is already in the car, and you can have fun driving it around. Otherwise, it is just as well to unhook the batt than to leave it on a charger - so many stories about failed batts left on chargers.

[unclebilly]

Originally Posted by 917_Langheck

The best one is already in the car, and you can have fun driving it around. Otherwise, it is just as well to unhook the batt than to leave it on a charger - so many stories about failed batts left on chargers.

Not sure I agree and I won’t pretend to understand how these little chargers work. They are actually battery conditioners and from what I understand they desulfurize the plates within the battery so it regains its new capacity.


Here’s what Google says:

Battery conditioners restore the capacity of lead acid batteries by targeting lead-sulphur deposits which reduce the battery's ability to hold charge. These deposits build when a car is repeatedly driven on shorter trips or is left unused

[HobieMarty]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

I bought a couple of these from Gooloo after seeing a Project Farm test.

I'm satisfied. They work fine. I don't know if it's pulled a battery back form the depths of 6 volts, but it has revived more than one dead battery.

(As to the Schumacher, same story. I had a Craftsman (rebranded Schumacher) forever. When I bought my 911 I bought a Schumacher tender that lasted maybe a couple of years before it started whining. Lobbed it into the trash.l

That looks exactly like one that I got from Harbor Freight. the only difference is the name. Mine says, "Viking." It charges good and then switches to maintain and has a backlit screen that is red at first and then switches to green when things are good. The only drawback I have with the charger is that it first performs a "test," and if the battery is completely dead or very low, then it won't attempt to charge it. I can trick the charger by hooking up the dead battery to a charged battery with some jumper cables, and the charger will eventually charge the dead battery after performing its "test".

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[dad911]

We used the Schumacher 6 amp chargers for HS robotics for years. Very reliable.

I have a dual Noco genus on the boat, to maintain both batteries. Also reliable.

I also have a cheap computerized charger(s) from Amazon...... Had one that worked fine for about 4 years, lost it in a lightning storm along with a pool robot, can't blame the charger. Replacement still going strong.

I also recommend an analyzer. I have this one: Car Battery Tester

[ted]

Have had good results with the Optima charger.
I use 3 of the 4 settings.
1. AGM deep cycle for batteries in the trailer.
2. AGM engine start for the battery in the race cars.
3. Flooded batteries.

It provides various amp charging not like a constant trickle of a battery tender.
After charging it conditions the battery.
Then it goes in to maintenance mode.

[wildthing]

CTEK off Amazon. Looks exactly the same as the one Porsche sells but without the Porsche tax...plugged into my 87.

[Alan A]

Have a CTEK but don’t use it.
Wall mounted this in 2016 and have used it for 2 cars ever since.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NCOKV0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It just works.

[1990C4S]

I have a pretty good collection of German, Russian, and Chinese chargers. I don't see much difference in any of them.

I also have about five Harbor Freight maintainers that work just fine.

Someone on another thread posted 'my HF maintainer boiled my battery dry'. I don't think a 12 Watt charger is going to boil anything. And any time I have checked the HF charging voltage it's about 13.2 volts.

[zakthor]

I have a schumacher 'smart' charger I bought at a box auto parts store. The directions are so sparse I had no clue what it did so I monitored it with a voltmeter.

It looks like an older version of this and with similar specs:

https://www.schumacherelectric.com/products/6v-12v-125a-proseries-battery-charger-engine-starter/

It is actually pretty terrific. When charging it maintains a voltage about 1-1.5volts above the batteries current float, so rides the voltage up nice and smooth. A full charge of a fully discharged truck battery takes about 24 hours. I know its a horrible thing for a battery but this charger does a terrific job of restoring batteries.

I've also had batteries so low that they wouldn't charge. I put charger in the 'boost' mode and it zaps battery with 14v and lots of amps. After about 15 minutes the battery 'woke up' and started charging normally. I don't know what it means chemically, battery was behaving like it was shorted at low amps, but at high amps it unshorted itself?

Charger also acts as a maintainer with very infrequent bursts of +0.3v.

However: user interface is 3 lights and a button. it gives you no clue and almost no control of what its doing. I now always use it with a multimeter so I can see that its behaving sanely, because otherwise you just don't know.

I imagine there are fully instrumented chargers out there and I'd love to have one. Something that shares data over wifi or something, gives me a voltage graph so I know it hasn't gone crazy.

[jyl]

I’m pissed. My Schumacher battery tender died at some point and the battery on my AH Sprite is dead. Ordering some new tenders and of course there are a zillion on Amazon, so this thread came in very handy! Thanks! Three Noco Genius1 tenders on the way.