Portable jump starter

[undyingking]

I was quite pleased to see that there exists such a thing as a portable jump starter, ie. a device that you plug in to the mains to charge it up, and you can then subsequently use it to jump start your car. This one at Maplin is an example.

Unfortunately, a bit of hunting around turns up reviews ranging fairly evenly from "it works, brilliant" to "it doesn't work, rubbish".

Anyone actually tried using one of these, and how does it compare with a normal trickle charger?

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It is just a battery gone flat from unuse, I don't really have any other purpose for it at the moment. WOuld be good to not have to remove the battery -- I hate doing that -- although I hear that there are very clever trickle chargers now which don't need that either. Not to mention solar-powered ones, which I assume are entirely useless. What a wonderful world we live in.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

A solar-powered trickle-charger kept my battery going for 6 months longer than it should have done. The problem with modern car batteries (well the high-current ones you need for diesels at any rate) is that they wheese a bit for a week or two and then just die dead.

The last time it had struggled a bit to start (30 secs rather than 2) for a week. I then drove all the way down to Exeter during the day - so giving the alternator plenty of time to charge up the battery and when I tried starting the battery the next day it was dead. AA man checked all the electrics - it's just that batteries die v quickly and drastically these days

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, it'll be interesting to see if this flat period has degraded the battery, when I do get it back to life. Hadn't had any trouble with it before, but it wouldn't surprise me if it became rather more vulnerable.