Black & Decker VEC1087CBD Smart Battery 10/6/2 Amp Battery Charger

Do not waste your money! 9 out of 10 good batteries it gives a "fault code", meaning it stops charging on its own. There you sit thinking your battery is being charged, only 3 minutes after you left it stopped itsef from charging. Not to smart. All the basic older chargers simply charge what you want when you want without over-riding your actions.

The first thing I noticed about this charger is that it was much smaller than I expected. This is actually a good thing, in my opinion, since it takes up little space and doesn't actually weigh very much. As another reviewer noticed, the positive and negative battery clamps are not the same as in the photo. The ones in the photo appear to be made of copper and seem to be of higher quality, but that said, the ones that are on the charger are just fine and get the job done.

The charger rates are roughly 10, 6, and 2 amps, but there is definitely variance during the charge (perhaps these rates are averages during that stage.) I noticed on a couple EverStart Marine lead-acid batteries that the initial few hours of charge were at over 12 amps (according to the charger's LED readout.) This is definitely a plus as it should facilitate faster charging.

Of the 5 batteries that I have charged so far, 1 was a car starter battery, 3 were flooded deep-cycle/marine batteries, and 1 was a glass-mat "solar" type.

The only battery it sort-of had trouble with was the "solar" one. When I initially tried to charge it at the 10-amp rate, the charger reported an "Open Cell" error. So I tried again at the 6-amp rate, same error. Then again at the 2-amp rate and it worked fine and fully charged the battery.

I'm assuming that this "solar" battery is heavily sulphated. I suspect a new glass-mat type battery would work just fine.

The "voltage check" function works fine, but only when the unit is powered. It would seem to me that the volt meter function should be able to work without needing to be plugged in, but this isn't a big deal.

The only real disappointing feature was the "alternator check". While it does appear to work, according to the manual, it only works properly when your battery is pretty much fully charged. And let's face it, one really only needs to check the alternator when it's discovered that the battery in your car is dead for some unknown reason. There's probably a good technical/engineering reason for why the alternator check works this way, but it wasn't explained in the manual.

Performance-wise, it appears to charge fully depleted batteries in 8 hours or less. Half-discharged batteries in considerably less time, naturally.

Normally, I'd say this only deserves 4 stars, but at forty clams, it's a great value. So I say it's worth 5 stars.

The fan is loud, but it usually charges fine. Sometimes it displays a false "open cell" or "shorted cell" fault code. Restarting it usually clears the fault. Also it draws a lot of start-up current when first plugged in (a loud arc / spark from the plug is the result).

I bought this charger over a year ago and use it a lot for 2 trolling motor batteries of 80 Ah each. It charges them fast and efficient and keeps their Amps in maintenance mode.
The clamps don't look like the ones on the picture, they are cheap clamps, that's why I take one star off, but that doesn't influence too much.

I ordered this product to charge my car battery. I had previously used manual chargers on this battery with success. This charger promises automatic capability and diagnostics on your battery. Upon hooking the charger up to the car battery, diagnostics produced an "Open Cell" diagnosis, it would not charge at this point. I replaced with a brand new battery. The new battery works fine in the car. When I hooked the charger up to the new battery to see what it would say, same diagnosis, "open cell". Battery obviously is not the problem at this point. Tried hooking charger up to my lawn mower, same result "open cell". The lawn mower battery has been working fine. I have no option to override the assessment and still charge the battery if I want. I believe the battery I replaced probably was still good. Don't believe this unit diagnosis, costly mistake.