Maypole 4A Dual Voltage 6/12V Electronic Smart Car Battery Charger Fully Automatic 5 Stage Charging Cycle Lead Acid AGM

Been looking for a good charger maintainer for awhile brought 4 for my vintage cars which are 6v and 12v simple to use and reads the charge in the battery and tells you if the battery is any good . clear digital reading and simple to use

This is my 3rd unit. I bought the first in 2018. It’s still working well in an unheated car port on my classic car go 8 years! The 2nd is in the garden shed keeping the bike and mower batteries topped up and has been since 2020. This 3rd one is to keep another car ready to go that is now used less frequently due to retirement. I can’t fault them. They come with a choice of attachments and just work, keeping batteries happy in long cold winters.

I already own a CTEK MXS 5.0 trickle charger, which I use on my wife's vehicle. After my 318D AGM battery gave up the ghost decently- due to lack of use during the pandemic as I work from home - and was replaced, I started shopping around for a cheaper trickle charger. The CTEK is excellent, but at around £60 I couldn't afford another one. I came cross this MayPole charger quite by accident, saw the good reviews and decided to give it a go. On opening the package, I was very impressed with the unit itself as well as the manual which was in very clear English. The unit looked and felt like a high quality product. The clear backlit display with the digital display of the charging voltage is a welcome feature (the CTEK has only LEDs). The unit comes with both crocodile clip and ring terminals (if you want a semi-permanent solution), and connects to the lead from the unit via a standard SAE connector (again a welcome change from the CTEK which uses it's own proprietary connector). I plugged it in, and given my AGM battery was relatively well charged to start with, it started charging at 'Stage 2' and within a few hours transitioned to the 'Stage 3' or float phase, with a float voltage of 13.8V being maintained consistently throughout (exactly as recommended for float charging of 6-cell AGM batteries). It's been rock solid since I plugged it in a week ago. I really don't see a difference between this MayPole and the CTEK chargers, except this one is about a third in price. Highly recommended. I wish I had come across this before I bought my CTEK. On another note, don't let your AGM battery lose charge - as they say it's next to impossible to recover these batteries once they've lost their charge beyond a certain threshold.

This is a good charger. I have had it for 5 years and used it several time, it has done me proud. However my car battery fell to 6.1 volts and I was not able to get the charger to go to 12v charge no matter what I did with the mode button. So it is not suitable for near depleted 12v batteries (it thinks its charging a 6v battery) it should have an overide funtion that forces it to do 12v. [I hooked up another 12v battery in parallel and that did the trick]

Superb bit of kit. If you’re not using your vehicle for a while chances are things like the alarm will still be draining your battery, especially in winter. Cold weather and batteries don’t get along.......this is the fix! So easy to use, run an extension reel to your car lift the bonnet connect red clip to positive and black to the bodywork for an earth and turn it on. This isn’t a booster but a trickle charger, depending on the stage of your battery it takes an hour or two to top up the battery. The slow charging is much better for the battery. It comes with winter mode and won’t let you reverse the polarity by mistake. Connect it to your unused car every 7-10 days and just leave it to do it’s thing. Amazing value and so easy. For the price it would be mad not to have one around.

I bought this to keep my motorcycle battery topped up whilst it languishes in my garage. Search any of the popular motorcycle websites for a motorcycle battery conditioner and you will pay consirably more for the same thing. This works flawlessly, it's as simple as pluggin it in and swithing it on. I will check the condition of your battery and (if it is safe) will start charging to its full capacity. Once fully charged, the charger switches over to monitoring mode and waits for the battery voltage to drop, it then trickle charges it back to full. It comes with 2 charge cables, one with crocodile clips and another with screw on terminal connnectors. These both have a connector at the other end to plug them into the charger unit. I have permantly fitted the terminal connnector cable to my bike and leave the fly lead tucked in the fairing. When it needs a charge I just connect it to the charge and turn it on. Only downside is that there is on power button on the charger, as soon as you switch it on at the mains it is on. Not a big issue, but it is the only fault I can pick with this.

I have several of these doing different jobs and I have given a few to good friends. We have a Motorhome and in winter I leave one of these on each of the battery circuits. We keep a little caravan for my wife parents and that battery sits all winter on one. The original built on chargers are not as good to the batteries and I have monitored the original types and they all too often maintain too high continues voltage to be sustained by a battery. I have two 15kw stand-by generators on our two yards and these now have the Maypole chargers as their original units eventually cooked the batteries. I have deliberately not quoted anything about voltages or "stages" as not everyone understands all that but I do understand how a battery works and I have changed 1000s in may lifetime and I know most reasons for their demise and most reasons are over/under charge. For devoted brand name followers this does the job and does it well in the £20 price bracket. The 4a now has an AGM mode available I have never tried one on a flat battery. I am very unlikely to have a flat battery as I was a mechanic and understand all to well the idea that a 12v battery once allowed to go down well below 12v never mind 7 or 8v is unlikely to recover properly so if you have a "flat" battery maybe best to get a good battery first as these no chargers is a magician. Once you have the good battery in your camper/motorhome/generator/motorcycle then buy one of these and it'll not go flat again. Instead of having a dud battery every few years your new battery will be around for many years. The Maypole even comes with a little tail with plug on connector one end and two eyelets the other to permanently attach to say a motorcycle battery and simply plug the charger off before you leave and plug in back on on return. My son in law has Maypole on his Honda tourer and does exactly the same job as the very expensive own brand he was about to buy. The same tails can be permanently attached to most batteries and as the unit also comes with a second tails with small crocodile clips you can attach it to charge a separate battery with no fuss. They are polarity protected and if connected wrong a symbol appears rather than the normal volts etc to let you know you have connected the thing up wrong. So all in all, yes there may be "better" if you believe all the blurb maintenance/full time chargers but these are all you need to keep a normal motorcycle/car/motorhome/tractor/boat/generator etc 12v battery in good shape while sitting for months They will also charge most sizes of 12v system It's not often I write a review but these have proved very useful to us here as they do all we wish without wasting energy on heat and they are cheap enough to added to every item that is barely used. I started with one of these on a stand-by as every time there was an outage I had to get the car moved and jump leads connected to get it going and I dont have to buy a new battery every 2 years because of neglect I am impressed I have had a few of these Maypole units for a few years and non have failed or damaged a battery. All have been as should be

This must be the 5th charger I have bought. Okay, you would expect them to get better over the years....but this is perfect. It has a clear, digital indicator...it shows your battery strength...it can give a full charge or a trickle...and it can be used 'normally' with crocodile clips OR wired in. I wanted to be able to charge two cars...a Smart where the battery is very tricky to get to (its under the passenger footwell so the carpet has to be stripped back to get to the battery) and a Mercedes 220 where it's under the bonnet - but tight. This charger comes with two leads. One can be permanently wired in with a neat/safe socket left tucked away, ready for use. The other lead has quality, compact crocodiles. If you have a car where you want to wire the lead permanently to the battery....one at a time, you undo the nuts which loosening the existing battery leads, AND MAKING SURE that the positive (red) lead cannot touch any metal other than the positive battery terminal. Put the washer-sized connector over the exposed screw (making sure you connect red to red, black to black) and then FULLY tighten each nut back up. In some cars, my Smart included, this will be a fiddly job....you may need a flexible socket set. And you can very easily lose the nuts as you screw them off the battery terminals. Do the job slowly and in good light. Once connected up, gently trail the extension (which is about 35 cms long) to a point where your charger will connect to it as and when you want to charge the battery. Normally, the lead will be tucked neatly away with the charger only taken to the car when a charge is needed. The alternative method of connection is the usual crocodile. Again, there has been some thought. Modern engine bays can be very cluttered...these clips are small enough to go neatly on the battery terminal or have the negative fastened to a nearby earthing point. This is a lovely, practical product. Whoever created it deserves a medal.