Amprobe 4589825 BAT 250 Battery Tester Review

I myself called Amprobe this morning at 877-267-7623 regarding: BAT-250 and as I expected this tester ONLY tests voltage NOT current or "charge" because of the Manufacturer tries to deceive the marketing tactic of the words appearing as such. I'm an electrical engineer and need some additional TRUE battery testers at additional locations and I got this BAT-250 over the weekend. I tested against another old reliable Radio Shack multi-select battery tester. This BAT-250 gave false hope for…

I'm a fireman in the wild. It's a long story, but suffice it to say I sometimes come home with boxes full of "used" AA batteries. These people have worked at the field radio station for one shift, and at the end of the shift they are rotated regardless of whether the radio station has been used or not. Communication is too important a security issue to risk. So I come home with hundreds of batteries. Some are completely used up, many are still good and some are like new. I bought an Amprobe…

Two major problems with this tester: (1) Design. You insert the battery between two contact points on the side of the device, one of which slides to accommodate a different size battery. Holding the device and battery, manipulating the slider to make good contact, and reading the result is more of a challenge than it looks. It is very easy to drop the battery in this case. The only good way around this is to lay the device on its side and put the battery on top of the device, but even that…

Like a few other people who have left feedback on this, I have one of those old basic Radio Shack battery testers which itself doesn't use batteries, just has a simple good or bad mechanical Arrow. About fifty years later it still works, but recently the needle hasn't returned to zero and I'm not sure how accurate it is. So I settled on this one, which is almost the same. One major thing that made me buy this is that it has a simple resistor inside that simulates a battery under load. Not all…

Short answer: Pretty much EVERY tester in this price range has the same positive and negative reviews. For each, you'll see "it works" ratings mixed in with the traditional negative response "test all batteries as 'good' no matter what". Some of the available models even appear to be THE ONLY PRODUCT apart from the "manufacturer" name stamped on the plastic. Just pick one and cross your fingers. I chose this (BAT-250) because it was the only "250" model on sale and claimed it was better than…