I use my Jeep all the time at work, and since I am often in industrial settings like shipyards I have to leave my 4 way lights running. Since I also spend a lot of time waiting for the labor and since gas is not cheap I will often shut off the engine to save gas- which means my battery doesn't last long with 4 way flashers running, radio playing, phone and/or laptop plugged in etc. Jeep was nice enough to include a warning beep, or more accurately a "Your Screwed" beep. When the battery starts to run down, the Jeep beeps at me, but by then it's too late to start it.
The up side of this is that there are always mechanics around that can boost me, but they are sometimes busy and I have waited over an hour for them in the past, often while other jobs waited.
I'd thought about upgrading the battery (about $250) or wiring in a second battery (close to $1,000) and I've often just thought that I can swallow a lot of pride and ask for a boost for that kind of money.... then I saw this:
The
NOCO GB30 Genius Boost portable battery booster. I have had battery boosters in the past but they also tended to be dead whenever I needed to use them, so they are basically a waste of money. The reviews for this one however seemed quite favorable, and, since it was on sale for only $90 this week at Canadian Tire, I decided to give it a shot.
Despite its small size, the manufacturer claims it can boost a dozen or so cars on a single charge. While I doubt I'll need to use it that often, it is comforting to know that they have that much faith in it. Heck, if it boosts me twice on a charge, I'll consider myself lucky.
In addition to boosting cars, it also acts as a rather large flashlight, safety light etc with several brightness and strobe settings. I don't really see myself giving much of a crap about that, but I suppose it could come in handy.
It also charges through a USB port, and has the ability to charge USB devices like cell phone, camera, GPS and the like, which actually came in handy on our
recent camping trip as one of my battery banks was dead and the other was left at home, and so was the
Bio Lite stove so we had nothing else to charge phones.
The GB30 worked beautifully for that, which was very much appreciated.
Getting back to it's primary function, boosting cars, it has smart circuitry that won't let you boost the car if you have it hooked up wrong, don't have a good connection or any other problems. After seeing a few reviews on Youtube and reading a few reviews it seemed like a pretty good investment. I'll probably kill my battery at work some time this week so I'll report back when I've had a chance to actually use it for what it was meant for.
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