Schumacher Electric Fully Automatic Car Battery Charger & Engine Starter - 6V / 12V Battery Charger & Maintainer - for Standard, AGM, Gel & Deep-Cycle Batteries - Reverse Hook-Up Protection - SC1281

This is so easy to use, My Husband ha a stroke and can't do much anymore, so it is up. to Me, I love this charger ir works great, was easy for me to charge My MDX the size is easy for anyone to pick up and carry and to charge any battery for a long life off charge. All people should have one , You never know when it is needed

The Schumacher 1280 is an automotive battery charger, but it is also much more.First, like most battery chargers in the $50-100 range, it allows you to charge your battery at 2 "speeds": the first, at 3 amp, is intended as a traditional "trickle charger," one that can be used to keep your battery in optimal condition and thereby extend its life and reliability. I live in a cold climate (Minneapolis) and tend to use my car only to get around town, sometimes not using the car at all on some days. This combination means my car doesn't get the sort of highway miles to keep the battery fully charged month after month, and the demands of getting it to crank up on subzero mornings is demanding. Buying this charger is bringing me peace of mind and will be financially rewarding over the long haul.Second, my Schumacher has allowed me to get my recently drained battery up and running in impressively short time. I bought it largely for this purpose--after I drained a 4-year twice this summer, replaced it, and then did the same recently with the new one. In its 15 amp mode, my Schumacher successfully desulfinated my current battery (i.e. a necessary first step to clean up the crap that accumulates inside a battery) and then charged it fully in about 6 hours. I had read that this process might well take 24-48 hrs. if done with a lower-amp charger, or might involve leaving a car overnight at a shop if I'd done it there.Most importantly, though, my Schumacher did this while giving me detailed information that let me follow the process and let me an important bit of information about the state of my battery once it was fully recharged. Its well lit LED display tells you when it begins the desalination process, the % charged as it does its thing, and the final voltage of the battery once it's done. The first two of these eliminate the guessing you'd experience with comparably priced charger. (On others you plug it in. . . and blindly wait). The voltage at the end of the process gives a good assessment of the state of the charged battery. In optimal condition, a battery should have 12.6-12.8 volts (mine was 12.6!); if its losing its abilities as a battery, it will have 12.0 volts or less. In a nutshell it tells you what to expect from your battery going forward.Going forward I'm planning to keep track of how my battery's charge and voltage change over time. For me, I'm hoping the pattern will provide clues whether something beyond my forgetfulness with inside lights has been at play.)The display also tells you if it can't successfully complete the desulfation process, in which case you'll know your battery is a goner; if you improperly hooked up the charging cables; when it's completed charging and successfully shifted to standby mode, thereby assuring you its not overcharged your battery; and more. The whole process more or less proceeds seamlessly. You simply turn the charger on (or wait for it to come on automatically after 30 seconds), choose the amperage (3 amps or 15 amps), and indicate the type of battery you own (most of us own standard wet cell batteries with fill-up ports on the top; this isn't hard to figure out).I should also note that I chose the Schumacher 1280 only after going online and looking at a couple of websites that I knew and trusted (Car and Driver; CNET). Both spoke glowingly about Schumacher's reputation and the advanced-for-its price range features that its 1280 and near sib 1281 offer in their price ranges.

I bought this battery charger because my previous, very old, charger finally stopped working. I purchased a different battery charger first but then realized that it would NOT charge a completely dead battery. This was one of the very few battery chargers on the market that will charge a completely dead battery. A battery charger that won't do this is worthless to me as I usually only get out my battery charger when I have a dead battery. Other than that this battery charger is very easy to use, reads out the charging current and battery voltage and even estimates how much the battery is charged. It will automatically shut off when the battery is fully charged as well. When it detects that the battery is "sulfated," a condition where a battery will not charge properly, it goes into a mode to repair the battery. This is very handy for older batteries. It will charge as low as 2 amps to maintain a battery in storage and as high as 30 amps for a very fast charge. It also provides a 100 amp battery boost which is the equivalent of a "jump start" to start a near dead car battery immediately if you are close enough to a power plug to plug it in. The battery charger is also very rugged and, of course, quite heavy too. If you drop it, no worries. It has some advanced features to diagnose a bad car alternator but I have not used this yet.

Works well, as advertised. Decent price. Lightweight and compact. Auto charge and quick charge are both nice features. Easy to read and tell charge state and when finished trickle mode. Cables and cord long enough to have some distance from battery being charged. Good brand, hopefully it lasts a long time.

No problems with it, with so many functions, I had to read through the owners manual. I put it on my lawn mower the night I got it, and monitored it, saw it was charging, by morning the battery was full and it was in maintain mode. The box was pretty beat up, but I brought a “used, like new one” so I figured that may be the case. The unit itself works great though.