Features:

  • Charges batteries other chargers cannot , down to 1.25V; Car audio/video applications exceeding 250 watts over the OE system
  • Integrated (+) charging clamp LED work light with nonslip grips
  • Charges, conditions and maintains 12V AGM and flooded batteries
  • LCD battery charging gauge and quick-set selections for easy operation
  • USB charging port compatible with smartphones, cameras and tablets
  • Charges 12V batteries other chargers cannot
  • Charges faster than competitive chargers with up to two times the output
  • Won't overcharge your battery
  • Maximizes your batteries' performance
Saved me over $800 in batteries in just 5 days!

In spite of some reviews here, I bought this charger to find out for myself if it worked. My main reason for buying this is that I have 3 Optima Yellow Top batteries and several others. Day 1: Connected this little charger to my recently failed battery from my truck. Upon connecting it, it read 10.8 volts after selecting the appropriate Optima battery type. I left this to do its routine. I should note that this battery was put on a few other charges (I have 4 different chargers including an AGM Battery Tender, a regular Battery Tender, a Craftsman 2/6/10 amp charger, & Schumacher Multi amp charger with both deep cycle/starting modes. NONE of these would bring any of my Optima batteries to a full charge. Day 2: Went out to check the progress and the Optima 400 was indicating 100% charged. I verified the voltage with my Fluke multi-meter and it showed 12.8v. I placed the Battery Tender unit on the revived battery. The green maintenance lights came on. The battery was fixed! Now, it was time to really test this little unit, I had another Optima yellow-top reading 8.4v. That is considered a discharged battery but I connected the 400 to it and left it overnight. Day 3: Second Optima Yellow-Top remained at 50% all day. Day 4: Found the 400 in fail mode. Disconnected the charger and reconnected it, left overnight. Day 5: After being on this unit for 2 days I was pleased to find that it was indicating a 100% charge! I verified again with my Fluke multi-meter and it was at 12.8v! I attached my second Battery Tender on it to keep it topped off. I set my 3rd Optima Yellow-Top to be charged. I did not measure the voltage beforehand. Day 6: Went to check the overnight charge and the battery was already at 100% and in maintenance mode! Conclusion- I had 3 dead Optima batteries that cost $270 each. I was about to get rid of them but knew these had a recovery mode. I now have saved $821-$109 (charger)=$713. That is an investment that has paid itself off almost 7 times over in less that a week. The bottom line is that this little charger really works! Buy it, you wont regret it.

If You Have an Optima Battery—You Need This Charger!

This is one of the most intelligently designed products I've ever used. I also own a Ctek 7002 & a Noco Genius G3500 battery chargers both of which I also like a lot. This one is better. It keeps you apprised of what it is doing. Will tell you if your connection to the battery is bad. And lots of other stuff that you don't have to get out the manual to understand. It has idiot-proof connections for the cords. And even a place for you to wrap the cords around the unit for storage. The wall mount has a place where you can clip on the clamps. Plus, it has well thought-out controls (buttons) on the face of the charger. (For geeks: Great UI design.) I have a classic car that I installed a brand new Optima Red Top battery in last fall. I forgot to disconnect it for the winter. I did a trickle charge on the old battery and a power surge/interruption killed the Noco G3500 charger. I live in rural Wisconsin. (Noco graciously replaced it since it was only 3 months old.) Anyway, the Optima was completely discharged last week. So flat that neither the Ctek nor the Noco would recognize it or start charging. (The Ctek has a setting for Optima batteries, but that made no difference.) The Noco would quickly flash all the lights and the Ctek would think about it and then go into problem mode. So I bought this charger thinking that Optima probably knew how to best charge their batteries. I put in on the battery for 24 hrs. Sure enough! It read 100 percent charge the next day. Started the car and it fired right up. Awesome! It's true! It will charge batteries other chargers won't. The Digital 400 isn't as powerful as Optima's bigger 1200 charger, so it takes longer to do a complete charge or reconditioning. But after reading the reviews on Amazon, it also doesn't have the problems the 1200 seems to have—and it's half the price. Downsides: The wires seem a little insubstantial. (A softer plastic insulation may be the reason for that impression.) The clamps could have bigger jaws and I had to spread the clamp wires more apart (a bigger "Y") to attach to the terminal clamp and a safe grounding point in the engine compartment. It feels substantial. It's seems well made, it's easy to use and it tells you what it's doing. Plus it's a comparable price to the Ctek and Noco chargers. What more can you ask for than that? I am really, really impressed with this little unit.

Optimal Battery Charger and Maintainer for my ATV Battery

I left my ATV go for a few months without starting it and before I knew it I had trouble starting it. The solenoid would activate but no start. I was going nuts trying to figure it out thinking that if the solenoid activated it couldn't be the battery. I read that I should check the battery anyway so I bought this charger and sure enough my battery was very low at about 35%. I charged it overnight to about 75% and the next morning the ATV fired right up. Since then I have recharged it to 100% and am keeping the charger connected to maintain my battery. I do not have an Optima battery in my ATV but it doesn't matter. This charger has a nice form factor, allows me to choose Auto/Marine, Motorcycle/Powersport battery, or Optima batteries and has an LCD panel that displays and gives me all the information I need. 7/6/15 Update: Still working well and maintaining ATV battery. Not getting out on my ATV as much as before so nice to have it fire right up when I need it. 8/1/18 Update: Mine is still working fine for my purposes. Just hopped on my ATV started right up and off I went.

Very nice high end battery charger!

I ordered this charger because I have two Optima battery's in my army truck (M35 A2). This winter was a bad one and when I checked the truck last the battery's were dead. the voltage was down to 6-7 volts. This charger said that it can help deeply discharged battery's. The charger automatically goes through different charging steps so you just pick what kind of battery you are charging and it does the rest. The first battery came right back to life. The charger has a conditioning step to help out the battery. The second battery took three times to get it back to life, but the charger saved both battery's. Saved me from buying new battery's ($350). Totally worth the price! Stores all the cables nicely, and charges your cell phone too.

Impressed... a Lot

I purchased my first of these less than a month ago. Then I ordered a second identical unit a few days after the first arrived. That's how much I've been impressed with the performance and sophistication of these little chargers. I've used them happily on a couple of Optimas, three Odysseys (including pair of their unfortunately discontinued Diehard Platinum branded batteries), an Exide Edge AGM, a relatively new Diehard Advanced Gold AGM, the original (from late 2003) batteries in a VW Phaeton, a factory "wet acid" battery in a late-model VW. I really appreciate the display showing charging status. There's some ambiguity in the instructions for selection of settings for charging. There's a button for Optima and other "high performance" AGM batteries. Doesn't every vendor claim to be selling "high performance" AGM products? Optima customer support opined the Odyssey-built batteries were "high performance," weren't sure about the others. Until advised to the contrary, I tend to use the Optima setting on all the AGM batteries. Wish they offered something as good for the six-volt Optima AGM battery. UPDATE: Four months later, I realized that you can indeed use this charger on the six-volt Optima battery. The catch is that you must charge two at a time, connected in series (not parallel). I'm doing it for the first time this morning, topping off the charge on a pair of new batteries just arrived from Amazon. (They were fresh and reasonably well charged on arrival.) The 12" East Penn connector cable (battery to battery, negative post to positive of the other battery) is available online. Mine was just under twelve bucks at All Battery Sales & Service. Optima customer service advises the pair should be matched in capacity, size and voltage. Hoping to use this method to revive deeply discharged six volt batteries? I'm not sure how often two discharged batteries end up with about the same voltage, unless awfully close to zero.

Wait! Think Your Starter Battery is Bad and Can't be Salvaged? uh,...Not So Fast...

Don't trade in that old starter battery that is reading bad, without trying this charger first.. The advent of the Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) battery has changed the world of automotive / boat / RV batteries and their maintenance. I had inadvertently switched on the master power switch on my boat when replacing the cover. When I went to start it again, I was met with a discharged battery, which tested totally dead. In researching batteries on the web, I learned most conventional chargers will not recognize a battery that has dropped below 10.5 volts, and one charger I had gave an error code of a dead cell. After reading that the Optima Digital 400 charger could bring a battery "back from the dead" in some cases, I ordered it. I hooked up the Optima Digital 400 per the instructions, and noted that the LED readout properly identified my battery as an Optima Blue-Top Starter/Deep Cycle battery, that it was registering 6.2 volts, and was at 0% charge. Long story short, after about 22 hours, my battery was fully charged and ready to go. In addition to AGM types, the Digital 400 will also recharge conventional lead acid types. To summarize, if your vehicle or boat has an AGM battery, you need this charger. Period.

My expreience so far.

I have 2 155AH AGM batteries connected in parallel that store power from 3 solar panels. My black and decker charger was only charging the batteries to 12.3 volts. I needed something that went deeper and was made for big high AH batteries. And since it is winter...I need to be able to maintain the batteries, because no sun for weeks will kill them. I connected the charger and chose the 3rd option for large auto/marine batteries. It should take no more than 2 mins for the charger to analyze your batteries. Then it begins. The charger clips click when they are charging. The first picture is the charge controller showing 12.7 volts. This was 3 hours after I first connected the Optima charger. The second picture is overnight the next morning. I would say that we are full. 13.5 V. When the batteries are full, the charger should go into a maintenance mode. For the sake of this review, I dragged my ass outside to the shed to take the last two pictures of the unit this morning. 13.4 V between 75% and 100%. Still charging. First charge is doing great! We shall see if this little guy stands the test of time now.

Hands down best charger for Optima Batteries

I have a bunch of Optima yellow batteries. I use them in my vehicles, also to power my inverter for emergency generation. I have 4 other battery chargers, one of which is specifically for AGM batteries. None of them do as good of a job as this Optima charger. I am able to get my yellow top batteries to full without having to worry about harming the battery. I should have bought this charger first, I would have saved myself a lot of money and aggravation. My wife didn't drive her car for 2 weeks after breaking her arm falling on a sidewalk after ice storm. Her 5 year old yellow top battery ended up getting dragged down to 5 volts. I wasn't able to charge it with my other chargers. This Optima charger charged it, topped it off, and reconditioned it all in the same unit. I put it on a capacity tester (modern battery tester) and the battery is as good as new. Definitely worth the little bit extra money for this charger. Wished I had bought this first.

CPAP backup battery charger

I use an Optima blue top deep cycle marine battery for emergency backup for my CPAP. I'd been using a regular and inexpensive automobile battery charger, but my battery never seemed to last for more than one night even though the chargre said it was charged. I recently learned that deep cycle batteries need a different sort of charger. This little Optima charger is THE one. It has buttons that are icons of the different batteries it will charge, my blue top was one of them. So all I have to do is tap that button and the charger tells me all about my battery and how much it is charged, etc. I had just charged mine with the old charger which said it was fully charged, but the Optima said it was only 50% charged ! When Optima thinks it is fully charged you get 5 led lights, if it is only 50% charged you get three lights. Anyway it is a great charger, easy to use. The only thing I think they could improve on is the LED written display. It prints various messages and is a little bit difficult for my old eyes to read. But, just how many bells and whistles can you pack into a charger that fits into the palm of your and ? ! I'm extremely happy with it.

Keep your baby alive

This is the only charger I would trust to charge my Optima Yellow that I have installed in my Cobra. I was previously using a cheaper and generic charger that I got from my local shop but never really trusted it enough to leave it on 24/7. Even when it wasn't charging it made noises and never seemed to turn off. So I finally splurged and bought the Optima. Honestly, I wish I had done it years ago. The Optima charger/maintainer does it all and is quiet. The screen is awesome, use is straightforward, and comes with a compartment to organize your cables. I've been using it for the last year with no issues. Leave it attached to the Cobra so it can keep the battery alive since I rarely use it. All in all, I give it a thumbs up and would definitely recommend this to anybody.

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