Autowit Super Capacitor Jump Starter, 12V Batteryless Portable

Bought this several months ago after I left the lights on my car and had to get a jump from a stranger. I didn't want to deal with the embarrassment of asking someone for help, so I looked up alternate ways to charge my car battery. I then remember an old video by Scotty Kilmer who highly recommended this product. It looked like a gimmick, but judging from the hundreds of glowing reviews about this, I got it. Looks like that battery was on its last legs - 3 months later, I was doing an errand, went to start my car... nothing. Heard the solenoid trying to engage and that unpleasant clicking noise. So I busted the Autowit out. Read the instructions - very easy. Plug the blue side of the included jumpers into the supercapacitor. Match the red to red, black to black. Wait about 3-5 minutes (my battery went from displaying 11.6V all the way down to 10.2V as it was charging). When it hits 100%, it beeps to tell you it's done. You hit the red button on the thing to start the discharge process. It beeps for 10 seconds giving you enough time to get in your car. Once the 10 second countdown is done, it'll do a long beep as it discharges the supercapacitors. Start the car during this period and bam. It's like the battery never died. Next day, I figured the battery was bad and I needed to get it replaced. Well, lo and behold, the battery proved me right - car refused to start up again. Same thing, pulled it out of my trunk, hooked it up, same process, car started right up. Went to my local Sam's Club to have it replaced and now I'm happy as an oyster. No batteries - officially rated to be stored between -48 to something like 130 degrees Farenheit. If your battery is so flat it can't charge your SuperCap 2, it also includes both a mini USB cable you can hook into any computer, phone charger, or power banks you take with you. It also includes a 12V cigarette charger. If you have a spare car or you know a friend is nearby but they don't have jumpers, you can simply plug it into their cigarette lighter and it'll charge itself in just 3 minutes. It's a bit pricey, but I'm willing to pay that price. The non-Lite version is nicely rubberized, built tough. It comes in a handy storage case that contains all the wires you need and of course the instruction manual. The presentation on this product *exhumes* quality. You get what you pay for folks. I recommend this to all my friends and family.

It works as advertised and started quite a few vehicles already. It has limitations as others have stated. If the battery is dead, dead it won't do you much good unless you find a way to make it see voltage. I built something something to bypass this but unless you are into electronics it may be out of your scope. Also, if you are working on old or hard to start equipment or vehicles this isn't for you. If you are looking for something easy for emergencies this is terrific. It is easy to use and doesn't require charging every few months. I have had it a few years now and it has started everything I have needed it to. Including my 6.0 diesel above it's rating. I would recommend for anyone. Addendum: I gave now used it maybe 50-60 times far above a normal user. It has started everything except equipment that needs constant cranking to start. If you are NOT using it as a mechanic for diagnostics or repair then it is great. I now have 2 of them and they have both worked as advertised. YOU DO NOT KEEP IT CHARGED. So, if your battery is below 10 volts or so and you need to jump it quick, it isn't for you. Fortunately, I carry a small battery pack that has USB ports, ac ports, etc. When my own daily driver battery died a few days ago I just used it instead of the van battery. It takes only a few minutes from most alternate power sources. As an example, if you drive your car every day, park it and come back and boom, dead battery. It will work perfectly. Just put it on, let it charge a few minutes past 90 something percent. I usually just wait until 100%. Hit the button, wait and it is going to start provided you connected the clips tight.

I bought this unit because I have a mid-engine car. The trunk is thus basically in the engine compartment and gets extremely hot. I had a lithium jump start battery for a couple of years but it swelled after one. Not only is that dangerous, swollen lithium batteries are very hard to recycle properly. Plus they have to be recharged occasionally. Before that unit I had sealed lead acid units. Even with periodic charging (every 3 months), they all randomly failed when I needed them. In addition, they won't fit in the tiny trunk of my current car (which has a 33 lb trunk weight limit on top of that). So I bought this Autowit since it shouldn't have problems with the heat, weighs nothing and doesn't have to be charged ever. Three years after I bought it, I finally went out to my car when I was away from home and had it not start. It wouldn't even click. The battery was dead, dead, dead. I read through the instructions, hooked the Autowit up and it took 2-3 minutes until it beeped that it was charged. I hit the button on the unit, waited for the solid tone and the car fired up as if it had a new battery. I drove home and found the battery didn't even have enough juice to do the little lowering the window thing cars do these days when I closed the door. I should add that my car is a 1.75L turbocharged 4-cylinder. Anyway, this thing is perfect for my car and I'm glad I bought it.

I use this in an auto auction environment where we constantly run into dead batteries. I have a golf cart with heavy duty jump-start batteries and 20 foot cables to start cars with but they are very heavy and bulky to drag out every time I start a car so I bought this unit to make my life a bit easier. I've had several li-ion jump starters in the past (including a NOCO) but they are hit and miss and are very easy to damage. This thing is a beast, but it does have its limitations. I'll start with those: 1> Sometimes when hooked up to a COMPLETELY DEAD battery it will not recognize that it is hooked up and therefore will not go into JUMP START mode, effectively making it useless. This happens about 10% of the time with completely dead batteries. 2> This cannot be left hooked up for a car with a bad charging system to run off of, as it only give you about ten seconds of power before shutting off. With that being said I knew of these limitations before-hand, but there are some cool features of this unit: 1> It's easier to use than the super heavy duty jumper cables coiled up in the bed of my golf-car truck. 2> I can hook it up to my jump start batteries in my cart to pre-charge it so it's ready to go pretty much any time 3> I don't really have to worry about damaging it by leaving it hooked up too long or cranking too long with it 4> Some diesel trucks are difficult to start with the batteries in my cart. I charge this up (with the same batteries) then hook it up at the same time as my heavy duty cables and it adds enough power to start those suckers up! This works like a charm almost every time. I don't regret my purchase and am giving it four stars, however if there were a way to force it to go into jump-start mode even if it didn't detect that it was connected to a battery then I'd give it 5 stars.

Update #3: Have not needed to use it since last edit but it connects & loads up using any & all of the included connectors. I’ve even used my little 10w USB solar panel. (Took forever for reasons obvious). All worked & when I tested each, used the truck & it was ready to go. So no issues. Works as stated. Works well. The only variables are the vehicle & the user. Aside from a tiny solar who-cares-what-you-have-going-on-today panel, each method you use determines your charge time. It’s math. It works. Buy it. Just double check your connections like I didn’t. Wink-wink. Vanlifer tip for those with steeds & iffy electrical systems: Load it with your USB pack whenever you park. If you occasionally need a jump but think often enough you might need one every time, this practice will ensure less downtime when you have to go but ‘Damn! Three days since last jump. Trickled down to 20%, USB battery, yikes! I’ll be on the road in forty five minutes, not 2.5! Damn damn! :insert Doc Brown facial expression: So, shortly; Have a weak electrical system? Buy this & habitually connect it to your USB battery pack on parking. Less downtime. Update #2: I gave it a day. Out of frustrated fairness, I gave it another go. Connected to a charged battery this time. Used only the jumper connector to turn it on. Worked. Seems intermittent. Unsure of cause. Will continue use as needed & update review as my experience evolves. Update #1: It’s been a few short months & it no longer works. It will charge but not begin the countdown when the button is pressed. Damn waste of homeless guy funds! Original review below: The BEST thing about this is that it will crank a light truck. Others I looked at won’t work very well with even my little 4.6L motor. When I was experiencing an electrical issue, this helped me stay moving until I found the issue. It’s light, so easy to stow, carry, and retrieve out of your VEDC. Simple to use. Very few connections. It’s literally plug (or pinch) & play. & in the event you have a tragically low battery, you can even prime this thing with your cell phone charger or a portable USB battery. Takes longer but it works. One-person use with a ‘beep’ loud enough to hear inside your car if it’s freezing outside while you wait for it to charge. And it’s tough. With no battery in it, you don’t have to worry about handling it like you would a lithium ion or a lead acid battery jump starter.

Started my Nissan Armada with a V8 engine with ease. The battery was so drained that the engine would not crank. This is the newest of the 3 autowit jump starters I own. Have them in all my vehicles and they have never let me down. Highly recommend.

After getting it in hand and running through an initial charge cycle to check if the unit works correctly, I found that you cannot leave it alone. Like other reviewers have mentioned, this needs to be unplugged (or stop charging) from its source as soon as it hits 100% - leaving it connected longer just causes the unit to discharge, which had me scratching my head. It would've been pretty easy to design a stop-charge mechanism, especially when it's over $100? There are a lot of other battery packs that are cheaper... Charging it through the USB port took way too long - it felt like an hour, but the docs says it's supposed to only take 30 minutes. Realistically, you really need a 12V source, as this should cut charge time in half or more - since you have to disconnect the device when it tops off, this is a more manageable time. It also claims a 10 year life, with 100,000 charge cycles possible - so you're going to fire this 10,000 times a year??? That's over 800 times a month, or over 25 times a day??? I find those numbers baffling... ADDENDUM: So... I finally got to do a real world test on the unit. Test vehicle: Honda Civic with a half flat battery, 7VDC - 8VDC The Super Cap 2 was taking too long to charge from the half-dead battery, so I found another battery to charge from, as per instructions. It took 5 - 10 minutes with a solid 12VDC! I watched the display flicker from "12.0" to "12.1" volts, but the percentage charge quickly went up. Once it beeped (buzzed?), I quickly disconnected and reconnected on the Honda battery. I then hit the ON / OFF button and the unit started to count down from 10. Once it started to beep (buzzed?) again, we started to crank the car... Now, this car has a history of hard starting, so this would be a true test; sure enough, after about 10 seconds of cranking, the car did not start. After 10 seconds of cranking, the Super Cap 2 was DONE - display showed 47% capacity, and it would not induce another cranking cycle. What does the Super Cap 2 instructions say to do in this case? Start another charge cycle...AGAIN. That's it. Now, I would think most people would use this product in an emergency situation; I would not think they would like to go through SEVERAL charge cycles just to get a car started. This is where this product disappoints. I would assume this product would fire the engine on the first try - NOPE. I think you're better off getting a lithium jump pack, which should be about the same price. Now, I dunno about you, but this was a major disappointment for me. Unit returned for refund. ADDENDUM: So it looks like this manufacturer / distributor likes to sic it's customer reps / techs on you whenever you write something bad about their product, like I did... THEY claim the unit is supposed to keep recharging (above 95%) if kept connected to charge - which my unit DID NOT DO. They claim the unit is supposed to be able to discharge several times once it's 100% charged - which my unit DID NOT DO. They claim the "100,000" cycles is for commercial / business use - why isn't this explicitly stated? My (returned) unit couldn't even restart the first time. This is the first time I've encountered such a hostile response from a "vendor" for leaving an unsatisfactory review. I pointed out to them that I was merely stating my direct experience with their product - it could have been possible the unit was defective. (If the unit was defective, their quality control sucks; I was not going to get into a back and forth shipping headache for this.) Be careful dealing with their "customer service."

I presented a tough scenario for the Super cap 2 to prove itself on a low battery located under the rear seat of a gm car. And it did not work as advertised, utilizing the Super cap 2 alone failed in the above scenario on the first attempt. I then connected car #1 to car #2 using jumper cables and was able to get lights and alarms to power up but still not enough juice to start it. I then added in the Super cap 2 to a location under the hood for normal jump assist's and then the Super cap 2 was able to provide just enough additional energy to turn the engine over so it would start. The Pros The tech behind it makes sense instead of using lithium batteries it uses Capacitors for storing a Pre-charge of energy and it should work on something that wasn't so depleted maybe where you have dim lights and the dash lights up but doesn't have enough juice to turn over the engine. Unlike a Lithium battery this unit can be 100% pre charged in less than 10 mins. While it wouldn't start the car alone it did tell me the system voltage and that the battery was low, when the car was running it does display the charging systems voltage output. I did have to also use the accessories to pre charge it in car #2 it comes with a nice carrying case a USB cable as well as a cigarette lighter socket plug mechanism for pre charging it. The Red and Black cable attachment is removable and is designed in such a way that you cant accidently install it backwards. The cons I felt it doesn't work well with GM side mounted battery terminals, due to the batteries design the clamps kept wanting to come loose, maybe some sort of offset shoes should be included for insertion between the actual battery terminal and the cable then the clamp's could connect to the shoe instead of the small cable attachment bolt. The instruction manual is really vague on what to troubleshoot it did show a chart on the various readouts but then nothing to suggest what each one meant and how to correct them. Update: I had a no crank but the lights came on and this device was abler to operate properly and was able to provide enough current to start the car.

Nachdem schon 2 Powerbanks versagten bin ich mit dem -immer funktionierten- Starthelfer - auf der sicheren Seite

Good solid build, draws it's power from the flat battery. So if your battery goes flat and no one else is around it could be a live saver.

Simple et efficace

Slower to charge on usb than advertised

Brilliant