Schumacher Electric Manual Battery Charger & Engine Starter – 6V/12V 200A Heavy-Duty Auto Battery Charger with 40A Boost Mode, Color-Coded Clamps, 6-Foot Output Cables & Rugged Design SC1446

I got this electric/manual battery charger for my mechanic grandpa, and he’s been grinning like he just found a classic car under a tarp. It’s simple enough for him to use without needing a YouTube tutorial, but powerful and reliable enough to bring dead batteries back to life like some kind of garage wizard. Now he swears by it and says, “They don’t make ’em like this anymore”—even though they literally just did. Great gift for anyone who loves fixing things the old-fashioned way with a touch of modern help!

My husband loves this battery charger. Works as it should. Easy to roll around his garage! He gives it a 5 out 5.

Had a hard time finding a manual charger. I use it mostly for older vehicles and unfortunately the automatic chargers have a very short boost mode and then take 3 minutes to recycle. This one boosts until you turn it off!

Great charger for basic lead acid batteries. Although description on Amazon says for use also with AGM and GEL batteries it is indeed NOT intended to be used with those. So the description is wrong in that aspect and should be changed. That's why 4 star out of 5.Otherwise great. But DO NOT charge your AGM or GEL batteries with this unit. Don't know why it says you can online.Just trying to prevent others for having a battery explode in their shop.

Works great. Lighter than my old one so easier to move around.

We had an oops wherein the outlet that keeps the trickle charger on our RV running was accidentally turned off. Our RV has two batteries for the engine, and four for the "house" portion. All six batteries ended up with zero charge on them. Using this, I was able to get the engine batteries up enough to start the engine (after about 2 hours of charging, then a boost), as well as getting a charge on the house batteries to be able to charge them normally with the onboard inverter in the RV. Being on wheels was just a bonus with this unit. Worked great for me.

Bought this is January 24. Went to use it this January, rolled it to the vehicle and plugged it in. Needed to move it a little closer to connect cables, and sparks shot out the vents as a short took place. This case is very hard to remove, to get access to the inside. What I saw was a hot wire terminal had fallen off the connection point and fallen against the case, which created the grounding. I was able to reconnect the wire- but the unit is dead, so the short damaged something in the circuitry.That means the repair may be more expensive than replacing the unit. It's just days out of warranty, past return limits.This was a replacement for a previous Schumaker charger that had worked for over 30 years, that had a timer switch quit working. I gave that to a friend who replaced the timer- and it still works.Companies often decide to cuts costs to keep prices low and profits coming. The terminals involved here were surprisingly poor, not typical at all- and I think the unit failure is due to nothing more than going cheap to save pennies, at the cost of quality and reliability .... And, of reputation. A good brand is worth a lot, provided it represents quality products. In my view, it no longer does.NEW INFO- and sadly worse, which is why my original 3-star rating is now a 1-star.Given I had no warranty, I looked into the costs of service- which are about the same as the cost of the machine. So, I decided to open it up and see if I could do my own repair. As I have been in the manufacturing business for many years, designed and built dozens of products, I'm not an average DIY guy.So...First step, open the case- and that immediately made matters worse. Not only is it difficult; there are parts that are held in place by friction alone; no fasteners. The ammeter and lens is one of them, they just push into a hole. The cord to the ammeter is not connected except by passing through a loop, which is fine except the cord isn't supported either, so the meter and lens immediately fell out, but access to replace them is poor.Overall, I found the inner construction to be as cheap as possible. Every corner cut. While it may work fine out of the box, the idea that it will last for years is no longer realistic. The quality it takes to ensure that durability is just not there.I hate to see a brand name that has meant quality for decades prostituted for profit, by gutting the quality out of the product and riding the brand loyalty- and I think that is what has happened here. Schumacher dominates the market for these things, but now, they are actually China-made. What's more, they now make chargers for other brand names, simply by making minor changes in the cosmetics of the case, so that if you buy a similar competing product- most likely you are still buying theirs, and getting the same compromised designs, materials and workmanship. The saddest part is that with a few exceptions, the cost of building in durability is not that much, they sold their good name very cheap.

I have wanted a good charger for a long time. I wanted multiple settings, high amp start function, and a timer. This checked all the boxes for an affordable price !