OptiMate 2 DUO Smart Battery Charger - AC to DC - 12V - 2 Amp

Video Transcript for OptiMate 2 DUO Smart Battery Charger: The Breakdown

What's up everybody It's AJ with etrailer.com. Today, we'll be checking out the OptiMate 2 DUO, it's gonna be a battery charger and maintainer. I got it hooked up to my car, 'cause the battery's kinda low. Let's check it out. So I kinda messed up and I ran the radio with the car and auxiliary for a little bit longer than I meant to, so it really dropped the battery, so I was worried about the battery not having a full charge or getting a full charge as I was driving around. Luckily, we're doing the video on the DUO 2, so I hooked that up and I saw that it was yellow, so it was not a full charge on the battery, and we left it on there for about an hour or so, and it got my battery back up to the green light, which means it's fully charged, and that's gonna be great, 'cause I don't have to worry about that running out on me anymore.

So we're gonna go over the LEDs right here, you got the first one here, it means it's powered on, it is getting power, this one's gonna be your error light, so if there's something wrong, this will flash, and I suggest looking at the manual to let you know what it's gonna be. This one's gonna be charging, so this one will light up, it was yellow for us to show that it wasn't fully charged, then it turned green here, which means it's fully charged and it's maintaining it right now. Using the clips, they do have a nice snap to them, so I don't have to worry about them falling off pretty easily, especially when I got a side post mounted battery, there's not a lot for it to clip onto, so it's important that it's gonna stay in place. I'm just gonna go positive, then negative, and then it's hooked up. You can see right now it's reading the battery, it went from yellow to green, letting us know it's fully charged.

One of the nice things about this is you can actually get rid of the clips if you don't wanna use it, if you want a more permanent solution, you can mount this inside a vehicle, that's more for something that you're gonna leave out for the winter like a lawnmower or a golf cart that you got to park away. You can hook up the eyelets and then permanently mount this to the battery, and you see the housing on the outside even has holes to run zip ties or screws if you wanna mount it onto that lawnmower or golf cart, that way, you just pull it up and plug it into the wall and it'll keep it running or at least keep the battery charged and maintained over the winter. They're gonna have six feet of cord, so that's the one that goes to the outlet here, and then the one where you hook up your accessory, whether it is the eyelets or the clamps, that's what you're gonna get with this. So it's not too short, if you want to bundle some of it up, maybe you don't need it at all, you can park a little closer to the wall than we do, you have a workbench or something, that'll work nicely there. Now, another thing to consider is with the eyelets, it's got a built-in 15 amp fuse right here, so that's gonna protect any feedback or anything, so that it's not gonna upset or damage any electronics on either side of that.

Another thing, with the five-step charging process it goes through, when you hook it up, it's gonna take a look at the battery, make sure it's not dangerous to be hooked up to it, then it'll slowly see how low it is and give you that readout, and then it'll assess how much charge it needs to give it to get it back up to 100%. On the SAE connector, it also has a weatherproof cap you can put on there, so if you don't have any of the accessories hooked up to it, you can put it on there and it'll protect it from any dirt or water. The case itself is waterproof too, so you don't have to worry about when you do go to permanently mount it, the rain's not gonna hurt it, and the dust and dirt's not gonna get to it either. It's got an IP54 rating, so that's gonna be that dust protection, so it's not just limited to cars, you can use it on trucks, boats, motorcycles, whatever you need to charge slowly and just keep that battery maintained, it's gonna work on you. Either way, I think it's gonna be a handy thing to have whether you're charging something all winter or you just need to top off your battery.

Well, I think that does it. Thanks for hanging out, and hope this helped..