Product Reviews6v & 12v Heavy Duty 8a Car Battery Charger With Trickle Charge

Better than Expected, Great Buy for the Price

I have another charger that was giving me some grief charging batteries of multiple sizes (4/8/20/120AH), but I couldn't pin down the problem and the diagnostics for my current unit didn't line up with known troubleshooting methods, so I purchased this charger to determine whether the current unit was faulty, or if the issues I was seeing was just due to bad cells.

I received a 'Catbo' branded unit, very similar to the photographed unit above. The first thing I noticed was a genuine, heavy, insulated-pins 240V plug - good start. The battery end is a bit cheap and the soft copper clamps won't last forever, but at this price they're fine and can clamp a good-sized terminal easily.

So I connected to a small cell first and (anxiously) powered it on. There's a couple of buttons on the front to select general battery size and type. Once you've done that, the unit takes a few seconds to measure voltage and starts up. Voltage readout on the unit itself was within 0.2V of my DMM - good enough.

Given I was coming from a silent 'smart' charger the fan noise initially caused me to power it off - the fan ramps quickly based on output voltage and is quite noisy. I changed my pants, braced myself, powered it back on and selected size and type and away it went.

It took about 30 minutes to drag an 8AH battery from 12.1 to 13.5V (on the DMM, it read 13.2V on the charger itself). Once it achieves this level, the green 'full' LED lights and the charger goes into Maintenance mode, where it maintains the full level as required - there's the very occasional ramp-up for a few seconds then back to just monitoring.

There's a de-sulfation mode for cells on their way out. I tried this across a few known-dodgy batteries with mixed results - the charger resurrected a couple of 11V 8AH units successfully (now stable at 13V), but couldn't do the same on an 11V 120AH battery - to be expected to be honest.

I do recommend this charger for the price. It's loud, but built well and does seem to know when to go hard and when to lay down. Voltage monitoring is good-enough, cable lengths are good, but if you're going to swap it around a lot it's worth adding a new set of clamps.

Recommended purchase.Read full review...

Works well and is well constructed

I need this charger to charge batteries in solar powered projects, so I needed to modify the wiring on the output. I found the internals were well made, soldered joints were well made, quality components have been used. The charger works ad designed.Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: zing-home

Look at this before CTek!

I currently have several Ctek chargers and recently discovered these which are a fraction of the price. This charger functions perfectly and is by no means inferior in quality or operation. Some cheaper chargers are fiddlely to find the correct mode of charge, these are very easy to operate, even an old duffer with bad eyesight like me can use these!
Definitely worth a look at less than half the price of others.Read full review...

Verified purchase: No

intelligent charger

Bought this charger just to keep the battery on my bike topped up over the winter lay up. Dead easy to install on the bike took about 5 minutes, I just leave it plugged in all the time. Great product would recommend , it does exactly what it says on the tin.Read full review...

Verified purchase: No

Compact easy to use

This is an excellent charger the red light tells you it needs charging the green light tells you it's changed. Also these a permanent connection to put on the bike making it easier to charge the battery if you have a garage or able to get the bike close to a power supply to connect the charger to the piece they supply left permanently connected to the bikeRead full review...

Verified purchase: No

Solid Unit

Very good unit. Solid construction, quality leads etc. Works very well. Would be better with a display that indicates where the battery voltage is sitting, and lacks some safety features, such as accidental reversal of terminals, so you need to double check terminals and be sure to connect everything before switching on, and switch off before disconnecting.Read full review...

Verified purchase: No

Compact with easy to use features.

Great little charger, easy to use and does exactly what it recommends.

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: zing-home

Great little tool that can be carried anywhere

This charger does exactly whats needed, no more no less than the more expensive chargers out there, its small enough to throw in your panniers while on a road trip, perfect solution for any situation to do with battery storage stages also, very pleased with my purchase and i will highly recommend this charger to othersRead full review...

Verified purchase: No

Compact & robust

Great little charger at a great price, easy to use , lightweight and does exactly what is says, also comes with permanant connectors if you want to avoid removing battery, particularly if the battery is in an inaccesible place like under the seat of your motorbike etc.Read full review...

Verified purchase: No

Perfect charger

Why spend more than double on a finicky type charger when this one does everything you want. I mean...you can't ride a fancy charger anymore than this one!!! I want my battery charged so my motorbike is good to go and this one does exactly thatRead full review...

Verified purchase: No