For anyone who’s a novice under the hood, this clear, impossible-to-ignore feedback makes it easy to confirm that you’re hooking everything up right, so you can quickly be on your way. But compared with any other model we’ve tried, Weego’s jump starters have a louder, two-tone alert and more-visible error lights. (Always connect the positive clamp to the positive post and then attach the negative clamp to the negative post.) Eleven of the 12 models we tested have reverse-polarity protection, and eight of them give some sort of audible alert that something is wrong. Reverse-polarity protection is the most important feature, as it checks the polarity before completing the circuit, preventing sparks and electrical-system damage in case you connect the clamps to the wrong battery terminals. Weego jump starters, including the 22s, have the best safety features of any of the dozen models we’ve tried. 1 Since the smallest jump-starter capacity we considered was 6,000 mAh, we’re not concerned about capacity even with very conservative estimates.Įven the most powerful jump starter is of no use if you’re afraid to use it, or if it damages your car because you made a mistake hooking it up. When we checked with Lee Johnson, our electrical engineer, about overall power consumption, we found that even our huge Ram 1500 pickup truck required only about 0.25 Ah, or 250 mAh, to start its engine. You shouldn’t really need more than that, since you can just recharge it after you use it. Every reputable company builds enough capacity into its packs for you to perform a handful of starts-enough to get you started a couple of times in case you need to pull over on your way home or on your way to a shop or auto-parts store. Capacity doesn’t directly affect how large an engine a model can start or how dead of a battery it can fill in for the measurement reflects only how many times the device can perform a start. But this is a pretty pointless metric when you’re shopping for a jump starter. Some jump-start packs have only a small error light to warn you of a reverse connection, but the best ones, including our picks, have both a light and an audible alarm that you won’t miss.Ĭapacity: Many companies brag about the overall capacity of their jump starters, which they generally list in mAh (milliamp hours) just as the makers of USB battery packs do.
If you screw up, you’ll get an alert and a chance to try again. But the reverse-polarity protection built into each of the jump starters we tested confirms that each clamp is on the correct post before completing the circuit.
If you confuse them and connect positive to negative and vice versa without that protection, you’ll get sparks at the connection and potentially damage your car’s battery or electrical system. When you hook up a jump starter to your battery, you need to connect the positive (+) clamp to the positive post, and then attach the negative (-) clamp to the negative post. Safety features: While most jump starters have a suite of safety circuits to prevent sending more current or voltage than they’re designed to handle, reverse-polarity protection is what makes them notably easier to use, especially for people who are concerned about getting the connections wrong.
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