Allstart Tools 556 Marine Battery Jump Starter with AC Inverter

5.0 out of 5 stars Quality Jumper Box with 22 amp battery, 1700 watt peak power, and 300 watt inverter, November 26, 2012

By Big Sur Steve This review is from: Allstart Tools 5569 Marine Battery Jump Starter with AC Inverter and 2 Pack Microfiber Cloth (Automotive)

I needed a rugged jumper box, that had a high ampere battery, was easily portable, and had an inverter to operate a variety of small AC electrical appliances. Tthis jumper box fits the bill.

The box is a little shorter and a little thicker than the Clore box I've been using for the past 3 years, which is excellent at getting cars jump started: Clore Automotive JNC660 Jump-N-Carry 1,700 Peak Amp 12-Volt Jump Starter If Clore made a jumper box with built in 300 watt inverter, I would have picked it up. They are ruggedly built, with a thick plastic housing, have strong clamps and thick lead cables capable giving a 1700 peak amp jump with 425 cranking amps. This is plenty of power to jump a large displacement V-8 automobile engines in addition to a number of Diesel engines. The box is also small enough to make it easily manueverable and can fit into tight areas where space is limited.

After looking at a variety of jumper boxes, this one came closest to meeting the specs I was looking for. The box is a little heavier than the Clore, but it also has a 22 amp battery which is a little bigger than the Clore plus a 300 watt inverter, which the Clore does not have. By no means is the Marine battery a heavy jump box, just a little heavier than the Clore.

I like the clamps on the Marine jump box. The tops of the clamps look better insulated than the iClore clamps and have strong clamping springs to prevent slippage of clamps off the terminals. The leads use a thick gauge wire, but not as thick as the Clore. The jump box provided plenty of juice to turn over a high compression V-8, and is rated at 40 jumps between recharging. Also the Marine box has a light. The light provides adequate light and rotates. The Clore box doesn't have a light.

On the back of the Marine box is a two plug, 300 watt inverter which is turned on with a switch. I used the inverter to charge an iPad 3 from 5 percent to full at about the same rate as a wall plug. The meter on the Marine battery is a bit more difficult to read than the Clore box. It is a vertical meter with 3 colors: green for full power, yellow for marginal, and red for needs charging. The needle had moved down on the green zone and almost into the yellow after charging the iPad 3. I prefer the left to right needle gauge on the Clore box which reads DC volts to show state of battery charge. As far as overcharging is concerned, the Marine battery has the edge over the Clore with an overcharge prevention feature, whereas the Clore box does not.

One other inverter test I ran was on a large Netgear Router NETGEAR Wireless Router N900 Dual Band Gigabit (WNDR4500) On a fully charged box, I kept the router running for 24 hours before needing a recharge. In case we have a power outage with the cell phone towers also down, I wanted to know how much router time I had for Internet access. During Hurricane Sandy, many of the cell towers were down preventing access to the web through 4G.

Here are my likes:

-sturdy build

-22 amp battery

-300 watt inverter

-stout, insulated battery clamps

-work light

-automatic charging shutoff when box is fully charged

Needs improvement:

-meter needs to show percentage of charge remaining

-external fuse on inverter could get caught and break. Needs a better location.

Overall, I'm very impressed with this box. It has a stout build quality similar to the Clore, costs about the same and also has a 300 watt inverter. The Marine appears to be a quality box on par with the Clore. Only time will tell if it hold up as well as the Clore with extended use, but I suspect it will.

To charge the jumper box by solar, I use a Goal Zero 15 watt panel which I have plugged into the round 12 volt port. This works pretty well taking about 18 hours of direct sunlight to fully charge the battery.

i used it a few times and have no complaints, it is small enough but powerful enough to get you out of a bind

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I got this based off a suggestion from my Yamaha dealer and so far it looks to be rock solid. I recently upgraded to 3 group 29 deep cycle batteries as I run a large audio system and needed to make sure I had a way to start them if I ever ran into a dead battery. I took the boat out recently and the batteries were rock solid so I didnt nee to use the jumper, but my cousin and another boater did end up using it and it jumped their boats with ease.

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