Optimate 6 AmpMatic - 12V 6A, High Performance Automotive Battery Charger & maintainer for premium AGM, Deep-Cycle Batteries (TM-361)

I have had an Optimate 4 unit that I’ve been using on my motorcycle for a number of years. I have been very pleased with how it keeps my motorcycle battery in excellent shape.The Porsche brand trickle/conditioning charger I have used on my Cayman for 13 years recently died. I bought this unit based on my experience with the motorcycle unit. The first thing it did was to thoroughly check out the condition of the battery which was found to be somewhat depressed and then overnight it rejuvenated the battery completely! I definitely can tell the more enthusiastic starting of the engine! I leave the charger on whenever the car is at home and I expect to get extra years of service strictly because of this unit and my compulsion to take good care of batteries!Just as an aside, the price of batteries is going up as well as installation charges. Some of the newer cars have battery monitoring circuitry that has to be reset when a new battery is installed and that costs extra! My seven year old X5M would cost me close to $1000 to put in a new battery because of this kind of “electronic nanny“. I keep that car on a BMW charger which has been doing a good job for seven years but I’m considering changing to one of these Optimate units!

I bought a new expensive AGM battery from a local shop, then put that bike away for at least 4 months. It was connected to the Optimate6 the whole time, but my situational awareness failed.Turned out that the fuse was blown on the lead cable that was attached to that bike for years.I saw the single green light on the Optimate6 & figured, "Green means good," even though I had used it plenty of times in the past. But of course one green light just means that the charger's plugged into the wall.Yesterday I decided to take that bike out & was totally ashamed when I realized I let my new battery waste away to nothing before my eyes, while I proudly looked at that single green light every day. When I replaced the blown fuse, the optimate6 told me the battery was totally flat, & I started looking for a new one online so I wouldn't have to tell my local shop what I did.But I left the battery on the Optimate6 just to see what would happen. When I checked on it this afternoon, the Optimate6 said that battery was at 80% & the bike started right up on the first try.I've tried to revive plenty of flat batteries with Battery Tender chargers without much success, so I'm convinced that the Optimate6 worked a miracle this time that the others could not have.

My brother has been telling me about this for years and I had a situation to give it a try. It does bring the batteries back. They are far from "New" but can see that I will probably get another year or two out of these batteries that would barley start the car. I have used it on my jeep and two battery diesel truck. The diesel truck was basically dead. I could only start w/ a charger connected. After running it on the Optimate for a week, they now work fine. They are a little weak but its been a couple of months and it always starts.

It conditions and recharges batteries. It took an almost dead battery and gave it new life. Will let you know if the battery is not salvageable.

I am currently running 6 of these Optimate 6 charger/maintainers. Some of the earlier ones are 10 plus years and still going strong. I have these plugged in 24/7 for maintaining/optimizing so they have a ton of time on them. Made the mistake of trying to replace a cheap Stanley charger/maintainer with another cheap one from Amazon. Won't be doing that again. With the price of batteries today it's just not worth it.

Good

(See Update at end of this review)I've decided to buy another one of these to keep my truck battery charged because it's hardly driven lately. I purchased and Optimate 6 Ampmatic eight years ago and I couldn't be happier and I'm even happier with what it did last month.The Optimate 6 Ampmatic that I've owned for 8 years is the 5 amp model. I'm not sure if that's available on Amazon but it is available on the Optimate site. But for only about $5 more, I ordered the 6 amp model this time. The display is different but otherwise they appear to be about the same. I plug my motorcycle in to the Optimate whenever not riding and it keeps the battery in perfect condition. However, several years ago, I left the battery in the bike which was in a trailer for the entire winter and, to my surprise, the battery was almost totally dead in the spring. Thinking about it, I have a feeling that the Optimate hadn't failed but the problem was caused by something else. When I unplugged it and plugged it back in, it appeared to work perfectly. But this experience showed me what great customer service Optimate has. I contacted them to describe the problem. They got back to me immediately - I mean, within an hour or so! The customer support person seemed to know his product well. He asked me a couple questions and then said he was sending out a new Optimate 6 immediately and send me a free return label. He wanted the old one back to analyze it to see if they could determine if it had a defect. I received the new Optimate in just a couple days.That was the only time I left the battery in the motorcycle during the entire cold winter. Even other year, I remove the battery and hook it up to the Optimate in my basement I've never had a single problem. Again, I suspect that the failure wasn't caused by a defect in the Optimate. It runs continuously all year long. The only time it isn't on is when I'm riding my motorcycle.But something happened last month that really made me glad that I have an Optimate 6. My wife went out to start her car and the battery was virtually dead. No cranking at all and the headlights wouldn't even light up. It turns out that she left the tailgate on our Honda Pilot slightly open and that killed the battery which was only one year old. So I first tried to charge it with my standard battery charger which, if I remember is a 6 or 8 amp unit. After charging for abotu 24 hours, the battery was still dead and I thought I'd have to replace the battery. I then hooked up the Optimate 6 and let it do it's thing over night for a total of about 20 hours. The battery was still dead. But I know that the Optimate will not run certain recovery steps if it senses the battery is still connected in order to prevent damage to the car's computer. So I disconnected the battery and tried again with the Optimate. The next morning when I came out, I didn't expect success but, to my surprise, the battery was actually restored to BETTER than new specs. (I have battery load tester, a digital battery analyzer and a Fluke volt meter. After turning the headlights on for a couple minutes to eliminate surface charge, voltage was still well over 13 volts. The battery was rated for 800 CCA but it no read over 1,000 CCA! Resistance, which had read (if I remember correctly) 6 or 7 ohms was now under 3 ohms. State of charge was 100%, State of health was 99%. In short, the battery was showing better numbers than what I would expect if the battery was brand new.So, the thing to remember is that if you have very discharged battery, disconnect it so the Optimate can go through all it's repair cycles.Today I was looking for a maintenance charger for my F150s battery, which is brand new, because the truck often sits without being started for weeks. After reading reviews of all kinds of battery charger/maintainers, the negative reviews give me pause. In one case, one of the most popular battery tenders caught on fire and it's lucky it didn't burn the reviewer's house down! After looking at all kinds of smart battery chargers/maintainers/trickle chargers and reading the reviews, I realized that I should just get another Optimate 6 and that's what I'm going to do.Update: Before placing my order for another Optimate 6, I sent an email to the company asking a question. Incredibly, I received a response from the COMPANY PRESIDENT the very next morning not only answering my question but asking me if I had any other concerns. Talk about customer service!!!

Bought many of them and they're excellent!!!