Schumacher XCS15 SpeedCharge Ship 'n Shore Battery Charger

This is a great little charger. I am using a large 460AH bank of batteries in my van dwelling and purchased this as an emergency charger after my expensive unit died. Once I hooked it up, it was astonishingly simple is to use. Now I want to keep it as a backup.

This unit has a cool percentage charged indicator. It was easy to hookup and turn on. The icons are a little confusing but all you need to know is your battery type and how to turn it on. It will do the rest for you. Most impressive!

I purchased this unit at a large chain department store nearby not through Amazon because I needed it immediately to charge my dead car battery. The unit is easy to use but, you should read the instructions first otherwise you could damage your battery if it's not set up properly. The buttons on the unit have icons that indicate fast, slow, and maintenance charging modes. You should know under what circumstances to use those modes. There are also buttons for battery type selection that are important as well.

Note that the unit is actually rated at 15amp not 10amp as indicated in the Amazon description at this writing which is a good thing.

The only issue that I have with the unit is that there is a cooling fan that is very loud. I can understand the necessity to cool the charger's components when charging a battery at high currents. The problem is that the fan is always on even when the battery becomes fully charged and is being trickle charged at low current levels when entering maintenance mode. I would have preferred that the fan be thermostatically controlled so that the fan comes on only when the charger's components heat up during fast charging. The fan should shut off during maintenance mode. Since the unit is microprocessor controlled, it would be a very simple matter to control the fan thermostatically for the price of a thermistor about a 50 cents in cost. As an electrical engineer and professional software developer, I can attest that the additional software development time to implement such a feature would be about 15 minutes.

Of course, if the manufacturer designed the unit with inadequate heat sinking on the critical electronic components to save costs, then the fan could be a requirement even at trickle charging rates. But, that would be a design flaw that would manifest itself in early life failure of the electronic components which would be even more problematic.

So, if you are looking for a charger to maintain a battery in full charge condition using a trickle charge mode (sans fan cacophony), then you may want to pass this one by.

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I spoke to Schumacher 4 times and got 4 different responses as to why it wasn't working properly and what settings I should use. It was turning itself on and off and setting itself to Gel when it came back on, when I had set it to AGM for my Marine battery before it went off. I did not lose power. At one point the charger read 15.7 and I could hear the acid bubbling. Of course I unplugged it, called Schumacher for the 4th and final time. The guy said no way it would charge that high. Well it did and I do know how to read! Since it was going on and off, resetting the settings and overcharging, I decided to return it as it was definitely defective and unsafe, but apparently Schumacher wouldn't stand behind it. Be careful! Overcharging any battery is DANGEROUS! Too bad, but I didn't feel safe leaving this unattended which is why I bought this "smart charger" in the first place.

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I purchased this unit to charge and/or maintain several different types of batteries including a bank of large 125 AH deep cycle batteries. Everything worked fine but the information during charging is not totally useful. In the charging mode, the new feature of automatically switching between % charge and voltage every 15 seconds was a good idea. However, it is only half a good idea. The voltage displayed is not the actual charging voltage at the battery. It is the mode voltage (6V or 12V) which is useless information that does not need to be repeated every 15 seconds. I returned this charger in hopes of finding a better unit.

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Great battery charger for the price. One of the best made for deep cycle batteries. I would suggest this one to anyone who needs one.

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