Review on Schumacher SC1359 Automatic Battery Maintainer by Jun Alves

A little over a week since this charger arrived I have used it to fully charge (none) four (6v) home deep cycle batteries (225Ah each) in our motorhome removing them), a 12V engine battery for the same RV, and a huge old 12V Interstate MT-49 Mega Tron II battery kept in the garage as a backup for an emergency jump starter. This big ol' battery is also the power source for the Turnigy Accucel 6 Microprocessor Lithium RC Battery Charger, so I'm hoping this new multi-stage charger will extend the life of the ol' battery. For the last 10 years I've kept it going by only occasionally feeding it with my old Schumacher 6/12V, 2A/6A single stage charger. There's no precision here, just check the voltage regularly and turn it off if it approaches 13V. do not load optimally, but also be careful not to overload it. This new multi-stage charger is a technological marvel in comparison, providing a charge percentage throughout the process, adjusting the charge to full battery based on input from the battery, and floating when the connected battery reaches 100%. One bug I noticed when charging an old backup battery in the garage was that the charger initially seemed to go into trickle mode prematurely. When I checked it, at one point a green light came on indicating it had switched to float mode, presumably on a full charge. That was not the case when I checked the voltage. To do this, unplug the charger from the wall outlet, wait about 10 seconds for all charging lights to turn off, then plug it back in to read the voltage. It read 12.6V, not a full charge for a 12V battery like this, so I pressed the battery size button to start another charge. This restart gave a reading of 77% and finally showed that the battery was fully charged at 13 volts. Given the age of the battery, that's probably all that's left in it and I'll continue to use it as described until it finally dies. While reading the manual is very helpful in understanding the charger, I disagree with the review suggesting it needs to be memorized. Using this charger is very intuitive once you understand the controls, read the manual and use the charger properly. There are only two buttons to choose from. The one on the left controls the size of the battery, with two options: snowflake or boat. Use a snowflake to represent a battery for a snowmobile, motorcycle, lawn mower, or similar small battery. Of course, the boat symbol represents vehicles with higher capacity batteries. I suppose it could have been a truck or car badge, but that doesn't matter. I believe the juxtaposition of a small snowflake and a large boat is now learned forever, memorization is not required. The other button is the battery type, with options to choose from: Standard, AGM, and Gel. My charger mentioned above was on stock settings. I don't currently have AGM or Gel batteries, but if you do you know and just choose the right one for your battery. I'm sorry it took so long. out!