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

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.

Bought this for my wife as an early birthday present for her WRX whose battery began to drain due to alarm/immobiliser/lack of use/cold. We had to disconnected the battery because the alarm was constantly going off warning us the battery was dying. The battery was only a few years old so we suspected it was ok plus the car would jump start so were confident it would take a charge. We could have left the battery disconnected but were keen to keep the alarm/immobiliser active for insuarance reasons.So after some research bought this one. That car wouldn't start and the battery showed a voltage of around 10.5v. After connecting the charger and letting it go to work, it showed 1 bar of battery life. After about 90 mins the battery had enough in it to disengage the immobiliser and start the car. Took the car for a run to give it an extra boost.On return, left the charger on the car over night, and it showed it had fully charged the battery and was now in float/maintanince/trickle mode.Mainly bought the charger due to its good reviews, low cost and clear display showing exactly what it's doing. There are more powerful faster chargers on the market but they are costly and seem overly complicated. This is intelligent so chooses which mode to use. You can manually change the mode as well if you wish. Read the instructions thoroughly, and visit their website for more information.Time will tell if its low cost means unlreliabilty, but its first 24 hours of use have been excellent. I wonder if she'll let me borrow it for my MX5.....?

Excellent and easy to use -good price too

My only previous use of a charger was a basic £14 one from Lidl's nearly ten years ago which I found confusing, so to have an auto gadget such as Maypole's was a big relief.For a novice, though, the instructions needed to be a bit fuller.the three questions are: 1. how do I decide whether to use standard 16v Mode or Winter Mode. ( discussing a few typical scenarios would help.)2. There looks to be a good bit of charge in the battery now. Can drive the car now and finish the process later?3. how much longer will this take, and/or how far through the process is it (I realise that batteries vary in condition, but even appproximatel would help.In practice what you do, I think, is to read thedisplayed voltage consult the instructions and then estimate which step you are at. (it is most likely at step4. Why during an early step the oltage showed 88 volts; is this something to worry aboutIt says that a fuller instruction is on the website, but it is not; it merely replicates the instruction leaflet. The website video likewise gives a demo but it had teh usual daft music, instead of a voice talking through issues and decisions to make.( a youtuber has done a slightly more useful video, but unfortunately he does not explain the above issues either (and beware he actually does his connections in a different order to the instructions.)When the charger is connected to terminals and then plugged in, in my case it defaulted to Winter mode, I think, as a snowflake was displayed, even though it also displayed top left the Standard 16 volt.I just left it on winter maintenance, even though the battery was completely flat.After 7 hours the display went green, and I have driven the car, so the charger did what I wanted to so am happy.The best single modification would be to display the Step you are at, and/or display a progress bar/ approx time remaining.I hope my experience helps others.