So after reading the great reviews here I bought this item at Wal-Mart and took it home to charge my deep cycle marine batteries.

Worked fine for about an hour, then I noticed that it seemed to be stalled at 85% charge. I did some more internet reading and discovered that this is a common problem with this unit, the readout stalls at a given percentage and never changes unless you unhook it and rehook it to the battery. I did that and instantly the readout changed to 100%.

So now I know for a fact I can never trust my brand new charger to tell me when it's done charging.

And worse, despite being 100% charged the unit never switched over to trickle charge. So despite being billed as a "smart" charger it's just a normal full power charger that will boil your battery dry if you leave it hooked up too long. Why spend $45 on something that a $10 charger will do?

Not only is it junk, the packaging is a complete lie as well. Now I know and you can bet your sweet cajones I'll never buy a Schumacher anything again.

The charger works great. Some reviews said it makes to much noise, geeez you don't run this in a library. I have no complaints, it's small size is a plus too.

I have a optima boat battery that sits for the winter. When I got the charger I hooked it up with very easy instructions. Showed me the % of charge and volts. It's handy to know what is going on. I think this charger is great ! I would recommend it.

As others have noted, the percent-charged reading can be grossly misleading. My experience is that when it shows 100%, you can expect to continue charging for another couple of hours before reaching full charge. Other than that, this charger works well. The biggest consideration with this product, however, is life expectancy. While this charger comes with a five year warranty, you are unlikely to get anywhere near that before it dies. This has been my experience with several Schumacher battery chargers. Unfortunately, there is almost nothing in the way of comparable items by other makers to choose from.

I've owned this unit for about 3 months and have used it on both car batteries and deep cycle batteries. The charger is astonishingly light as the majority of the case is used to store the cord. More importantly,is how well it works. The digital reading of percentage of charge is exceptionally useful to let you know where you are starting from and where you are in the process. I use to race radio controlled cars, which require enormous amounts of rechargeable batteries. I mention this only as a reference point to how many battery chargers I own. Without a doubt, this is the best and most informative battery charger I have ever owned. If there is a chink in the armor of this unit, it is the fact that this unit will not charge 6 volt batteries. However, this fact is clearly in the product description as it is listed as a 12 volt charger. This charger has a number of options for amperage and types of batteries. However, if you don't feel like "messing around" with the controls, just connect it, plug it into your wall socket and a default setting will allow it to start charging by itself if you forget to select any of the available options. Bottom-line, you can always spend more money for even more options, but unless you own 6 volt batteries, this is all you really need for a great price!