- Charger monitors battery condition and adjusts charge rate to prevent battery damage
- For car, truck, marine, RV, farm equipment, AGM, gel cell and deep-cycle batteries
- The 10 ampere charge has a self-adjusting charge rate for everyday charging needs and keeping your battery in peak condition
- 2 amp slow charge is great for charging small and maintaining large batteries
- The charger automatically determines whether the connected battery is a 6 volt battery or a 12 volt battery
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!
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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.Want Schumacher XCS15 SpeedCharge Ship 'n Shore Battery Charger Discount?
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.Save 26% Off
I bought two of these off of Ebay.They seem to work great, but an external volt meter showed 16.1 volts, and the charge percentage was at 100%. I'm not sure why this was, but I was using an amateur radio (Motorola Spectra 45 watt VHF) at the same time. That could have easily thrown off the charger. It does say in the manual not to do that, lol.
Initially (they showed up in the mail tonight) I like them. It's easy to use and simple to operate. Plug it in, select the charging current (2, 10 or 15 amps), battery type if you know it and off it goes. Even if you don't know the battery type, just put it on standard and your all set.
It does give a battery charge percentage while it's charging kinda cool...but it does not show the amperes going into the battery. Even if you select the 15 amp charge rate, once the battery is close to being fully charged, the current (or amperes / amperage) will lower.
There are two lines about the desulfator in the manual I posted a picture of it for you to read. I Googled if there is a way to make the charger manually go into desulfation mode, but I didn't see anything.
On (Schumacher's website) there is a link on this chargers for two manuals. The second manual listed says this:
Desulfation Mode
If the battery is left discharged for an extended period of time, it could become sulfated and not accept a normal charge. If the charger detects a sulfated battery, the charger will switch to a special mode of operation designed for such batteries. The display will start counting up from 1, increasing every hour. If successful, normal charging will resume after the battery is desulfated. Desulfation could take up to 8 hours. If desulfation fails, charging will abort. See Aborted Charge section.
Here is the link for that manual: It's on page 8. The above is a direct cut & paste.
All in all it seem to be great and I'll finish my review hopefully tonight or tomorrow about the 16.1 battery voltage.
**Update**
This is from This is from their page and all the credit goes to them.
"Equalization
Equalization is essentially a controlled over charge. Some charger manufacturers call the peak voltage the charger attains at the end of the BULK mode (absorption voltage) an equalization voltage, but technically it's not. Higher capacity wet (flooded) batteries sometimes benefit from this procedure, particularly the physically tall batteries. The electrolyte in a wet battery can stratify over time, if not cycled occasionally. In equalization, the voltage is brought up above typical peak charging voltage (to 15 to 16 volts in a 12 volt system) well into the gassing stage, and held for a fixed (but limited) period. This stirs up the chemistry in the entire battery, "equalizing" the strength of the electrolyte, and knocking off any loose sulphation that may be on the battery plates.
The construction of AGM and Gel batteries all but eliminates any stratification, and most all manufacturers of this type do not recommend it (advising against it). Some manufacturers (notably Concorde) list a procedure, but voltage and time are critical to avoid battery damage."
This explains the 16-16.1 volts and why it's necessary. With an amp meter, the current output is ~2.2A, at 16 volts. The percentage display showed the battery at 97-98%. So it would not be sitting at 16v for long.
Just make sure that if you do charge a marine, deep cycle battery, change the battery type.
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