battery tender vs. battery minder

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Hi all:
I want a charger for my car that sits idle a good deal of the winter months in the garage. I believe the two top choices are the battery minder and battery tender. It seems the main difference is the desulfation mode of the battery minder. Unfortunately, Costco only sells the battery tender and I like costco and they have a fantastic return policy. Does anyone have input as to whether the desulfation is a "must have" feature?

Thanks!
 
No it's not a must have feature, if you keep your battery charged and it doesn't need jump starts you won't need that mode.

Have you considered buying online? Pro Logix makes some nice chargers. You could a charger capable of not only maintaining but charging a low battery in a hurry. The little maintenence chargers are designed to keep the full batteries full, not charge low batteries although in time they will bring the voltage up, but slowly.
 
Hi: I have a car that has not been started for about 2 months and I figured a charger with desulfation might be a good idea to reverse and possible sulfation.
 
Regarding the batteryminders, the desulfation feature is really nice to have (not necessarily a must have), but IMO the best feature of the batteryminders is the automatic temperature compensation. Very few chargers have this feature, and of the few that do, IMO, most don't do it quite as well at the batteryminder.
 
Originally Posted By: NissanMaxima
Hi: I have a car that has not been started for about 2 months and I figured a charger with desulfation might be a good idea to reverse and possible sulfation.


If the battery is extremely low there's no fancy charger that will fix it. Batteries that sit more than a couple days discharged are permanently damaged.
 
Originally Posted By: NissanMaxima
Hi: I have a car that has not been started for about 2 months and I figured a charger with desulfation might be a good idea to reverse and possible sulfation.

How old is the battery?
 
Originally Posted By: NissanMaxima
Hi all:
I want a charger for my car that sits idle a good deal of the winter months in the garage. I believe the two top choices are the battery minder and battery tender. It seems the main difference is the desulfation mode of the battery minder. Unfortunately, Costco only sells the battery tender and I like costco and they have a fantastic return policy. Does anyone have input as to whether the desulfation is a "must have" feature?

Thanks!


Better all-around, and also can act as a full-rate charger when not used as a maintainer:

http://www.tooltopia.com/solar-pl2310.as...CFcm4wAodtw0IoA
 
Having had Motorcycles for decades, I used to use the Battery Tender chargers/maintainers. Batteries still seemed to die an early death. Close to 20 years ago I heard about the Battery Minder charger/maintainer/desulphators. The batteries I plugged into those lasted much longer. So these days all of my vehicles which can sit for extended periods, have Battery Minder's attached.
 
I have honestly had really good luck with the tender/trickle charger that goes on sale at Harbor Freight for $4.97

I have given many away as gifts, everyone loves them.
 
The Battery Minder products are more technically advanced. I have 4 I think.

You should look for high and low temp compensation in a quality battery maintainer. The better ones from Battery Minder have it.
 
I recently had to replace a lawnmower U1 battery that had always been maintained on a BatteryMinder charger. The date code on the old battery was 2004. Thirteen years is a pretty good life for a battery. I'm satisfied with the BatteryMinder brand.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Most chargers that can maintain are not as good at maintaining as the quality battery maintainers.


The pro Logix does both exceptionally well, my PL2320 even applies a load to the battery after 96 hours of being completely charged and then starts charging it again before going back into maintenence mode and monitoring the voltage. It's also got temperature compensation too.
 
I have a battery minder, and you should be aware that there is a big downside of the batteryminder in that it has a quite high self-drain back current.
This means if the power goes out, or the unit falls out of the plug, or someone decides to unplug your unit. The unit is taking a decent amount power to light up it's LEDs, and ends up completely draining your battery.

This is a actually a pretty bad problem since it will drain your battery to death in a short time (e.g. 1-2 days), not just to a low charge. If you go look on amazon, a lot of the negative reviews have people accidentally have dead batteries and are worse off then if they didn't use the product at all. Sure it's by accident, but it's not good.

The batterytender doesn't have this problem, nor do some other popular other models.

I end up using my CTEK more than the batteryminder. There might also be something to be said that the "pulse" charge in maintenace mode is better than the constant trickle charge.
 
Last edited:
Thanks everyone for all the great information. I didn't know about temperature compensation so that was a good tip! I will definitely want that being in Colorado. I will look at the other recommended units besides Battery Minder, but at Walmart today I saw Schmacher and know they've been in business a long time. I called and they recommended the SP1,SP2 and SP3 for maintenance and either the SC1000A or SSC1000A for dead batteries and maintenance. Is Schumacher good?
 
Originally Posted By: NissanMaxima
Is Schumacher good?

In the past, Schumacher chargers/maintainers weren't as technologically advanced as some others. Some have also been known to overcharge. Not sure about their latest ones. Check Amazon reviews before you buy.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: NissanMaxima
Is Schumacher good?

In the past, Schumacher chargers/maintainers weren't as technologically advanced as some others. Some have also been known to overcharge. Not sure about their latest ones. Check Amazon reviews before you buy.



Haven't seen any good Schumacher, they are battery cookers!

I did buy my father in law a Stanley fatmax 8a charger maintainer from Walmart and it seems to have a good charging algorithm. It's around $30
 
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